Originally I wanted to call this something clickbaity like: "DOMINATE ONLINE CONQUEST". I admit the current title resembles that a bit but I found it less... aggressive and misleading. This is a guide where I go through my strategies that I developed in fighting high level forts.

If you read this and come to the conclusion that the playstyle I present is not for you, then no problem. Leave a like if you got anything useful from the guide and feel free to comment below with how you do things differently. We're all here to learn. Happy reading.

Short ABOUT ME
I am a guy with 200 hours in the time of writing this. In terms of online ranking I'm currently sitting at 8650 with maxed my assault rating. The total score, however, is not a high number but it is sufficient to the point where I feel confident writing this guide.

Edit 1
Around the beginning of February 2020 clearly modded orcs started spreading around the highest defense rated forts. If you see these orcs in the fort you are about to fight be cautious. They share a few traits: They are all deranged with black, golden, or grey armour. All 7 immunities (mostly execution, arrow, frost, curse, fire, poison, beast) and stealth proof but there is literally not room to write that. Enraged by mortal wounds and bloodlust. All no chance. All defenders with curse weapon, beast slayer, vault breaker, and 3 epic traits. Some (the later versions) are necromancers as well. This is a screenshot of such an orc:



When fighting a fort with orcs like these I've found it's best to take it slow. Dominate the orcs on the first two points and have them contribute to your attack force. Also they all have death defying (a trait unique to tanks) so trying to take them on yourself is a waste of time. Once enraged let your followers kill them or use talon strike/elven light (which cannot trigger death defy) to get rid of them.

Edit 2
Tried reinstalling and playing conquest again in 2021. At this point every single orc in 1150 - 1200 defense forts are blatantly modded orcs with 7 epic traits, no chance, immunity to every single element in the game, etc. Seeing as this is the game now I will uninstall the game and not look back. You can still get gold rating vs these guys but the effort to do so is not worth the chore that is fighting them. Here is a link to how I'd recommend you do it. But don't. Play something else. M3rc out.

Here's my strategy in a few, abrupt words. Everything is expanded upon in the sectons below.

Using the outlaw legendary set + green gem in rune + -50% dmg taken roll on rune I'm buffing my followers up to an insane amount. The outlaw rune -> increased effectiveness vs enrage-heavy forts. Let orcs kill, heal when need arises. Either stay on top of buildings or dodge around on point, don't engage in combat with warchief or his bodyguards. Cap -> back on buildings, heal orcs, heal self. Graug to breach gate after D. Shaming/dominating overlord using ringwraith + bodyguard.

ITEMS

I have been swapping my setup around a bit and I encourage you to do the same if you find flaws with the setup. The idea is to use 4 pieces of the outlaw set in conjunction with our gems to get strong orcs with elemental proc capabilities.

Sword
Use the strongest sword you have. I use the Wrathgiver which helps to build wrath quicker for the overlord fight. It is an amazing convenience but my playstyle does not require that sword. Armaranthine, the Bright Lord sword or the Outlaw sword are also fine candidates. The sword is mainly going to be used to fight in the throne room. I will address wrath generation later in the walkthrough. RED gem.

As for secondary rolls any damage increasing rolls will be beneficial: 15% dmg when hit streak is above 15, 15% dmg when health is full, and 10% increased critical hit chance. The reason I'm not suggestion might gain or elemental procs is fairly simple. We don't need to build might in Ringwraith as it generates automatically. And as for the elements: It is a popular choice to defend with an overlord with several immunities. It is common to see an overlord being immune to all elements, rendering the secondary elemental roll on your sword ineffective.

Here is the sword I'm using. If you die to an olog there is a chance he will break your sword. Upon retrieving it the sword will be of a higher level:



Dagger
I use Outlaw dagger with +33% critical hit damage as a secondary roll. This stat carries over to your other weaponry. The damage to enraged enemies is very effective. RED gem.

Bow
In this slot I'm using the Outlaw bow and not a very impressive one at that. I use the bow mainly as a utility tool, not a damage dealer. I use it to shadow mount, shadow dominate, talon strike, and freeze pin. It is recommended to have either might gain on critical hit or wrath per ranged kill. GREEN gem.

Chest
For the chest piece I recommend either Outlaw chest or Heartwarden (reduced incoming damage when you have a bar of might). Heartwarden's damage reduction works aganst all incoming damage. If you do not have this chest piece I can recommend equipping the outlaw until you find a Heartwarden as enraged enemies are more likely to inflict damage to you. As for secondary rolls I recommend: Might gain per kill/crit, reduced ranged damage, and wrath on kill. RED/GREEN gem.

Cloak
Outlaw cloak or your favorite ringwraith cloak depending on what you're wearing as a chest. Complete the set but I see no reason use more than 4 outlaw pieces as great epic alternatives exist. In order to preserve wrath reduced curse duration is a very good idea even with wrathgiver. Reducing poison duration is also a very viable option. RED/GREEN gem.

(In the footage of me fighting the throne room I have two wealth gems essentially missing out on +30% more damage)

Rune
Outlaw rune. This is a core part of the setup. I recommend -50% allied damage taken as secondary roll. GREEN gem.

SKILLS
Instead of the entire skill setup here are the important and/or convenient skills for my playstyle organised in their subcategories:

1. COMBAT: Fatal counter, Ceaceless Might, Adamant
   
2. PREDATOR: Unyielding Ferocity, Shadow Blade
   
3. RANGED: Brutal Cold, Talon Strike, Shadow Dominate
   
4. WRAITH: Elven Light (no subskill)
   
5. MOUNTED: Graug Call
   
6. STORY: Quiver of Souls / Bright Lord's Wrath, Deadly Striker, Eagle's Eyrie, Lifeblood

Why exactly these skills and not x other skill? In order to answer that I'll refer you to the next section: Playstyle.

So by now you probably got the idea that this is a fairly lazy build. And it is. It is also a very safe build. And it's a pretty quick and painless build.

Let me walk you through how I go about trying to conquer a fortress. I will try to explain the skill selection when a relevant situation comes up. The fortress you see screenshots of are from a 1175 defense rating fortress I did for the guide. It was done with around a minute to spare and without my Wrathgiver at any point.

First order of business: Kill the siege beasts. Shoot the two frontal explosive caches and let your own siege beasts do the rest. I recommend poison siege beasts.



Mount your graug and attack the gate. The wooden gate only takes 2 attacks (1 click with the mouse), whereas the iron gates takes 4 attacks (2 clicks). Once through try to get some easy damage in using shift + E on one of the (hopefully enraged) enemy captains.



And now you just let your orcs flood the first point while you stand and put your best smug face on. Dodge spam if necessary. At this point you can summon your bodyguard and have him help out with the points. If you intend to use him in the overlord fight I suggest calling him back after capturing C.



Once A is captured everyone will rush towards B. I simply climb on top of a nearby building (grabbing arrows on the way in case I picked Bright Lord's Wrath). From here I heal my orcs 2-3 times while watching the mayhem unfold beneath me (default hold 4 while having Dominate - Lifeblood active).

With a few overpowered exceptions orcs with the no chance trait are weaker in other aspects to balance things out. Either they are a commander, destroyer or a fragile assassin. Let your attackers overwhelm and kill them off before they can get anywhere close to you. This is the safety dimension of the build. You are never in harm's way and all the carefully placed death sentence orcs are easily avoided.



Once the enemy captains start to pile up I like to use Talon Strike into the middle of them. This kills or severely wounds any grunt unlucky enough to be caught in the blast. Furthermore it damages and stuns enemy captains but not your own. This means an enraged enemy berserker opens up completely. With your outlaw rune your followers MELT through enraged enemies.



The cycle of heal followers / dominate broken captains / heal yourself / capture points goes on for B, C, and D. Once D is captured you summon a graug and break through the inner gates. If your graug gets killed by a beast slayer captain, I would suggest dominating the hostile siege beasts, climb off and they are now normal graugs. You can then climb behind the gate where it is usually more safe to destroy the gate.



The inner points of A and B are captured following the same principles of the previous points.



If you want to play more actively here are some obvious advice:
1) Never engage in less than full health. Use drain away from combat to heal in order to reengage.
2) From your vantagepoint you very easily stealth attack captains fighting or running to the next points in the streets beneath you.
3) Brutal cold can fear grunts which opens them up to stealth attacks. This can be chained onto nearby captains.
4) Dodge spam with talon strikes is an excellent way to stay invulnerable and support your attacking orcs
5) Stay cool and focus on the objectives. Wasting time on a point because you are in an epic battle is not helping much towards a good end time.
6) Shoot all the jars of grog, nests, caragor lures, spider eggs etc. to deal damage, trigger enrages on both sides, and any maybe weaknesses on enemy orcs.

Ringwraith (default 5) is an incredibly strong ability that I did not give much credit until I became very frustrated with difficult throne rooms. It is an amazing ability that lets you stay in control while increasing your damage substantially. In order to activate it though you need a full bar of wrath.

Wrathgiver makes this very easy to accomplish as executions (and some other abilities) grant you wrath. If one does not own that sword, however, you can easily build up a full bar of wrath before you enter the throne room.



(wrong cloak on the screenshot, should have been outlaw)

This is how I did it during the 1175 conquest: I Put on Bright Lord's sword + chest before the attack. Whenever I saw an enemy grunt far away from any captains I would simply kill him using a freeze finisher. The Bright Lord's sword gives you 10 wrath upon this action. The 2-set of Bright Lord set increases this by 50%. 15 wrath in about 2 seconds from a grunt is not bad. This can then be further increased by your prestige points.

Do this a few times during the siege and you will have a full wrath bar with ease. Unequip at least one of the items before going into the throne room, as the 2-set Bright Lord also halves the duration of ringwraith. It should be easy to see why reduced curse duration is a good secondary roll on the cloak. Being cursed without it will make you start all over, whereas with the reduced duration you will regain all lost wrath from a single frozen kill.

Note that this strategy also works while IN the throne room. Simply climb or shadow strike to an archer and kill him with a freeze-flurry attack. Should things go sideways that is an option.

In the throne room my strategy thus far sucks. You can of course not bring any followers apart from your bodyguard with you into the throne room which is why we resort to ringwraith. I will first describe everything I do to you, then show a video of that.

With a full wrath bar you're able to burst down ONE opponent in the throne room. Unless the overlord is protected by bodyguards that you want for your own defense, I recommend you forcus your attention on the overlord. This works vs. any overlord you will come up against (at least in legit forts). It is less effective versus an olog but they are much easier to kill and therefore not as frequent in higher tier forts.

Upon entering the throne room I inspect the overlord and the followers (unless I can tell who they are without inspection). Usually there will be 2-3 no chance orcs, depending on who the overlord is. Here is a picture of the overlord in the 1175 I did for this guide:



Normally you would look at that and get annoyed pretty quickly. What are you supposed to do against that? It feels pretty unfair. In addition every second you spend in the throne room increases your odds of dying. Assassins with great strength and epic daggers will one shot Talion if he is not at full health. Also they enrage each other. Also he is a necromancer. Also nothing works against him.

However! Not today. We will show him who is boss.

As I spawn in I would summon my trusty bodyguard! He can take aggro and attack the overlord/bodyguards. If they make the mistake of becoming enraged he will deal much more damage than me. Also if I faced an overlord tank and I couldn't dominate him because he was enraged I would just try to match him with my bodyguard. I do this because my bodyguard does not trigger death defying (a trait all tanks and certain cheated orcs posses).

Then I close the distance between me and the overlord. Once I get close enough I stun him with elven light, use ringwraith, attack him once to knock him over, double charge my glaive and go to town on him. And that is really it. I use elven light if the bodyguards are coming to his rescue.

This is pretty dense information so to visualize it I recorded my fight with the overlord from the screenshot above. Notice I make the mistake of summoning my bodyguard while in ringwraith. This ultimately wastes precious time and I have to finish off the overlord outside of ringwraith. Clumsy.

SIEGE UPGRADES

My preferred upgrades for sieges:

1. Sappers or Ologs. Sappers are inconsistent and with you on the graug you are basically doing their job already. Ologs are at least useful after the breach as well.
   
2. Defender host. Cap A faster.
   
3. Poisonous siege beasts. Kill their siege beasts faster.
   
4. War Graug. Break the front door.
   
5. Archers. Do whatever you want. I have not noticed a significant impact when changing this.
   
6. Overpower. Cap points faster.

ORCS

So taking over the fort relies entirely on your orcs. What means we have to be a tiny bit picky when it comes to the 5 orcs we choose to attack with. Here are my quick thoughts on picking orcs:

On attack I prefer berserkers and slayers with decent immunities + traits and no major weakness (duh). If given the option I would opt for defender and savage versions.

I prefer the following immunities (not ranked):
1) Immunity to poison
2) Immunity to fire
3) Immunity to curse

I prefer the following traits (not ranked):
1) Epic rage
2) Great strength
3) Thick skinned
4) Curse/fire/poison master

I immediatly get rid of my orcs if they have any of the following weaknesses:
1) Terrified of ANYTHING
2) Mortally ANYTHING
3) Dazed by spiders/ghouls/dragon/element

One critique I could imagine some might have of the guide is with regards to the orcs. Of course you can murder high level forts when you have strong orcs. But what of the players that are just starting to play online? Sure they have some orcs from their campaign but is that enough?

The answer is yes. I have two points to make on this: 1) When starting out or in lower rated forts, the orcs you are fighting will be of equal strength. Over time you will build up a stronger attack force. 2) Here is a picture of an orc I grabbed from my campaign. He was a regular orc and I gave him legendary training.



He is all right. Nothing spectacular. Epic rage is nice. Curse warder is not. His immunities are all right. The point is your orcs do not have to be outrageously good. Not close. The whole point of the setup is that your precense hyperboosts the orcs! They take 80% reduced dmg and deal 100% increased dmg to enraged targets.

And using this strategy you might feel slow at first but that only makes it easier to catch and dominate captains to use against the remaining enemy capains but also on your next assault. Every time you do a conquest, regardless of winning, you have the chance to steal strong orcs. Your assault gets stronger and next time it will be a little bit faster. In no time you will have 5 strong orcs that will murder everything on the capture point while you sit back and relax on a nearby roof top.

I was challenged on this and decided to test it out for myself. Using only 6 orcs from the Eltariel DLC I managed to climb attack rating in Lithlad and gold a 1175 defense rated fort with around a minute left on the clock. This goes to show that even mediocre and unsuited (trackers and assassins) orcs will work. Instead of sticking with the same attack group I should have simply swapped out better orcs as I faced tougher forts. Of course I would have done so if it weren't for the self imposed challenge.

Thanks to Rdven and Vegnz for providing cornerstones of the Talion build including the throne room tactics.

Thanks to iamasanguti for providing a strong fort to capture for the guide.

Thanks to reddit user Tuto3 for commenting with advice and thoughts.

And thank you for reading my short guide. I hope it helped you with where you are in your online adventures. This is my first solo guide so please don't hesitate if you see anything I should add/remove/fix/elaborate etc.

Happy orc hunting :)