The Invincible Overlord of Heroes.

Chapter 72 Knights’ Retinues and Mercenaries

When archers advance to rangers, 1 gold coins each is quite expensive, but their subsequent advancements are even more expensive.

Rangers have two advancement directions. One is to spend 500 gold to advance to a mercenary, and the other is to spend 400 gold to advance to a knight's retinue.

Xu Lai has three rangers. Just like the long archers, he first spent 3 gold and advanced one each to come out and have a look.

Such an approach would seem to make Xu Lai's troops more and more disorganized, but there was nothing he could do. Xu Lai believed that this was a necessary sacrifice.

After all, if he can't even distinguish the specific characteristics of these arms, good from bad, and just piles up scale in one direction, once he makes a mistake in the middle, the losses will be much greater than now.

After advancing, Xu Lai will slowly study their characteristics and applicable situations.

The two advancement directions of the Rangers, the Knight Squire put away the sword and bow, replaced the sword and shield, gave up the long-range ability, and became a melee armored knight.

Unlike the previous rangers who only had iron sheets on the outside, the knight's retinue can be said to be a complete armored knight.

The war horse under his crotch was upgraded again, from a prairie war horse to a war horse. It was also covered with a layer of chain armor strung together by small iron rings.

The knight himself also wore fine chain mail, a steel helmet on his head, steel boots on his feet, and held a round steel shield and a standard imperial cavalry stainless steel sword.

The mercenaries still held swords and bows, but they threw away a quiver and replaced it with a cavalry-strengthened battle spear of about 3 meters.

Of course, the mercenaries' weapons have also been upgraded. The swords have been replaced by heavy-duty war knives, the bows have been reinforced recurve bows, the arrows have been tapered, and the horses have been upgraded to field war horses.

Different from the knight's retinue, the defensive equipment of the mercenaries is not chain mail, but zhao armor and a closed helmet that covers the entire head.

With the addition of armored shoulder pads, bearskin gloves, armored leather boots and half-length armor for war horses, the mercenary becomes more like a fully armed cavalry.

The difference in equipment between the two alone is enough to explain their respective uses, but to truly distinguish them, we have to start with their characteristics.

[Knight Retinue]: Level 5 cavalry, each consumes 1 unit of food per day.

Feature 1: Charge, after use, the movement speed is increased by 100%, the physical consumption of the mount is increased by 100%, and the damage of the knight's retinue is increased by 30% for every 10 meters moved, with a maximum limit of 100%.

Note: The charge stops due to various reasons, and the damage increase effect lasts for 3 seconds and then disappears. (Such as being obstructed, being stopped by a spear, stopped and hacked to death, etc.)
Characteristic 2: Defensive posture. After entering this posture, the body armor is increased by 15%, the shield basic armor is +15, the shield durability is +15%, the health value is temporarily +50 points (the temporary health is consumed first), and the attack power is reduced by 30%.

(Note: Temporary life only appears once in the same battle)
Characteristic 3: Offensive posture. After entering this posture, the attack power is increased by 20%; the body armor is reduced by 15%, the shield's basic armor is -15 (minimum is 0), and the shield durability is -15%.

Characteristic 4: Mounted infantry. Excellent knights are first of all excellent infantry. The knight's retinue dismounts and fights without loss of attack and defense, and has +5 agility.

[Mercenary]: Level 5 mounted archer, each consumes 1 unit of food per day.

Feature 1: Sprint, double the consumption of the horse's physical strength, increase: 100% movement speed, additional damage to the movement speed increased to 50%, can be activated if the physical strength is greater than 40%

Feature 2: The waist and horse are integrated into one, and the hit rate will no longer be reduced when riding on horseback.

Characteristic 3: Follow the trend, 1. Kill the opponent while sprinting, and there is a 30% chance of still maintaining the sprinting state.

2. When killing an opponent with a sword, there is a 30% chance of causing the same damage to units on one side of the target.

This time, Xu Lai did not hesitate too much, and the other ranger was decisively promoted to a more expensive mercenary.

In fact, according to Xu Lai's understanding, the potential of the knight's retinue is actually greater, because in the empire's army sequence, the knight's retinue can be promoted to the 6th level knight, the 7th level grand knight or the 7th level paladin.Further up, whether you are a Grand Knight or a Paladin, you can continue to advance.

Mercenaries can be promoted to rangers, and after being promoted to level 7 heroes, it seems that the sequence has come to an end.

That is to say, the mercenary can be upgraded up to two times, while the knight's retinue can be upgraded three times in the sequence alone.

According to the secret information that Xu Lai was instilled, there is one final and only way to the knight route, and that is an existence on the same level as the empire's highest protector, the ninth-level Seraph.

And the only fearless knight at level 9 can only grow from the route of knight retinue.

Of course, Xu Lai can't think that far now. Think about how just by promoting these three level 3 rangers to level 4, he went through a harpy battle, and then slaughtered an astonishing number of cavemen, and even monopolized It takes most of the experience.

This is only level 4. The next level 5 will be upgraded to level 6, and level 6 will be upgraded to level 7. Just think about it, it will be a huge bottomless pit.

Being able to successfully upgrade these two mercenaries to the 7th level, Xu Lai could laugh out of his dreams, and there was no need to think about things after the 7th level.

He only chooses promotion based on the current situation. The knight's retinue is undoubtedly more balanced, and the four characteristics fully illustrate this point.

Whether it is fighting on horseback or on foot, whether it is offense or defense, the knight's retinue can adapt to it and is also very powerful.

However, the mercenaries have thicker armor and better horses. The most important thing is that they can fight from a distance, which can reduce the casualties of Xu Lai, who is seriously short of troops.

Based on this alone, Xu Lai would definitely choose to be promoted to a mercenary in the early stage.

Moreover, although mercenaries only have three characteristics, each of them is designed for offense, which is relatively more popular with Xu Lai.

After being promoted to three cavalrymen, Xu Lai's savings dropped by another 1400 gold, leaving just over 1200.

The gold coins Xu Lai can currently obtain are still only 50 gold provided by the gold box every day. The village office's tax revenue is only a few dozen gold a month, which is really not worth worrying about.

Now Xu Lai's subordinates are of high rank, and each promotion costs a lot, not to mention that they have to continue to build various buildings.

He wanted to open all the treasure chests in his hands now, but after thinking about it, he held back. There were many resource piles guarded by wild monsters along the way, including those near his own village, which he had not yet been able to explore.

Moreover, when the arrow boat comes out, he can also go to the river to salvage those floating objects. There is no need to rush to open the treasure chest now. He can wait until all is exhausted.

After upgrading these three cavalry, Xu Lai ordered them to eat and rest. Everyone else had been upgraded, but he hadn't chosen a skill yet.

After reaching level 9, the bonus attribute points were added to his strength, increasing his strength to 13 points.

The one-handed weapon at level 3 gains the ability to hit a critical blow, which consumes an additional 1% of stamina and deals 10% damage to the opponent.

The most critical thing is, of course, the choice of specialization. The two specializations that appear this time are both new ones that have never appeared before.

One is primary defense and the other is primary tactics.

It was these two specialties that made Xu Lai hesitate until now.

(End of this chapter)