I see too few people talking about Antiques and how absolutely gamebreaking they are in this current meta.
A Small Look into the Power of Antiques
By False Answer
You unlock Antiques on day 22 btw and how you obtain them is absolutely stupid.
Let’s talk about how you obtain them first.
How to obtain
It’s simple, you summon them on this screen using the currency you get from recharging real life money.
Another way is to participate in the event that is released with the function: Nationwide Realm.
Anyways, 20 summons and you’ll get the red antique you wished for.
Now onto their actual functions.
Functions
They give a small amount of stats just by existing. However their main function is to form combos with other antiques.
Now, let’s take a look at all the noteworthy combo.
Combos
Gear Up: A very easy to obtain and max set of Antiques that grants you an ability you can choose an officer to equip it on.
Note that any officer can only equip 1 antique skill at a time, and that same officer can’t be chosen for any other antique skills.
It gives the general you equip it with rage on kills and even additional rage for an ally (can be the one killing).
Overall a very good starter combo for low spender and f2p to experiment with to give you the extra edge in PvP.
Moving onto a more niche set of combo: Sagacious Scheme
It gives a 20% HP shield for all allies upon a skill cast. The shield can’t be stacked but can be refreshed each cast.
This combo sounds GREAT on paper but the way it actually works is less than ideal. You don’t shield everyone for 20% of their HP, you take 20% of the caster’s HP, then give that to everyone as shield (so more people alive = less shield from my SPECULATION and the videos). Also, the shield appears so small because of dzy’s debuff where he lowers all heal and shield by 60%, further nerfing the set’s impact
Weird/Untested interaction(s): Jia Xu at crown 1 has a passive where if people break his shield they have a 60% chance to be stunned. This shield might count as “his shield” for the passive.
Overall, this one is a cool early game set for extra survivability. Probably won’t matter too much but might edge out a win now and then. Maxing this is not a priority.
Moving onto the least broken set of antiques, it’s everyone’s favorite: Evil Suppression!
It is very simple: you equip it on an officer, whoever kills that officer in battle is DEFEATED. At max level, your officer get a one-time unyielding and the revenge defeat is guaranteed.
HOWEVER, Defeated is a very useless keyword outside of PvE because it is the same as “does 100% of someone’s HP, ignoring defense/damage reduction/shields/invincible”. Well, you know what it doesn’t ignore? Blessing, the unparallel strategem literally everyone rushes to get.
Yep! Just by having a strategem, you completely nullified something the opponent probably spent around $180 ($60 for each guanranteed piece, $180 for all 3) for. Therefore, the only place for this set is pve where even if the enemy is 50+ trillion HP, they’ll still go sky the moment they kill your officer.
The set gives good upfront stats since it’s all red antique but it’s essentially PvE-only until maxed where it becomes a vastly more expensive version of the Twin strategem. Not a recommended Wish choice!
Next is the most questionable set of antiques:
Mighty Blessing
It allows the officer to sometimes absorb part of the damage dealt as HP regen. At max level, there is a 30% your general absorb all of the damage dealt as HP regen.
This antique set is an unreliable rng mess that may either save your key officer, or just be a gigantic waste of resources just for some stats.
In the current meta, being able to avoid 1 or 2 stray hits is a big advantage since that’s less opportunity for Demon Zhao Yun to attack. However, a 30% chance at MAX LEVEL makes it not a priority just like Evil Suppression.
Up next is an actual broken set of Antiques:
Draconic Conquest!
This antique skill needs to be equipped by 2 officers to actually do something.
It gives the 2 you chose the Birth Status and link them togetger in battle. When there are 2 officers with the Birth Status, when one of them is about to die, they won’t die until the other one is killed. It is worth noting that if one of the 2 is banished (by Zhulong), the other one can die like normal.
When maxed, a lot of HP is restored to the one dying on the turn after, and even further HP regen after that as well, which is helpful in some cases but is largely irrelevant when you actually get this to max.
Who to put it on: Obviously you’d want your best Damage dealer to be essentially immortal but the question is who to link them to. Zhu Long can banish your damage dealer turn 1, making whoever they’re linked to vulnerable to dying and ruining everything so it’s a slight gamble who you think’ll survive.
With Sundering Behemoth, however, the answer becomes VERY OBVIOUS. You can only have up to 5 people benefitting from behemoth on a team, so linking someone on behemoth with the one who isn’t will make sure that they both stay alive until the second coming of Christ (or at least until turn 3).
Personally, linking someone who is gonna be Banished turn 1 by Zhulong with Zhang Fei is a good way to make sure your Zhang Fei stays in the game for more than 1 round.
This set is arguably the strongest survivability gimmick (competing with Sundering Behemoth and Blessing), invalidating a lot of nonsense like DZY/Zhang He’s endless pursuit and strategems like Chained Misery. The one wanker that seems to not care about any of this is Demon Lu Bu (and normal Lu Bu), attacking any and all individual equally.
Overall, Very high priority unlock, but not a high priority to max.
Finally, the most game defining set of antiques, the most obnoxious:
Sword of the Wild
Have you ever wondered how the opponent’s Zhuge Liang in slot 3 just jumped up and cast his healing in the beginning before any of the other officer made a move? Have you ever been wiped before the battle even begin by a Lu Bu, Zhang He, DZY team? These 3 swords might be the reason why.
This set of antiques allows the one officer you want to launch 1 extra attack BEFORE the turn even begin. This attack is treated like a Zhang Liao strategem extra attack, meaning it can be a skill and can gain rage! This is the ONLY set of antiques I recommend maxing since it’s quite literally gamebreaking.
At level 1-4, the unique skill allows your officer to launch that juicy extra attack for a limited number of turns only. However, at level 5, that officer essentially takes 2 turns during the round!
Doesn’t sound broken enough? Let’s examine some gamebreaking interactions!
Zhuge Liang (and any other officer) can now cast his skill at only 2 rage! 1 extra normal attack for 2 rage into skill cast, essentially shitting on Taotie in the early-mid game.
More chances to trigger strategems! Strategems like Zhang Liao (extra turn on attack), Guan Yu (Invincible shield break), Zuo Ci (Rage and damage Reduce on skill cast), Zhao Yun (stacking damage buff on skill cast), and Cao Cao (+1 Rage on skill cast) are all incredible advantages to trigger even once per battle. Now imagine you having double the chances to abuse those strategems you worked so hard (?) for!
More cheese! Tired of switching officers around when you’re stuck at that one Tower floor? Now you can try switching who gets to get the extra turn! Imagine that extra bit of offensive (or defensive) power was all you needed to finally beat that fatass Dong Zhou in Defend Jing Province!
Anyways, you get the point, game-changing, busted, broken, whatever. So, what’s the counter?
Short answer: Awakened Bi’an!
Long answer
Anything that punishes taking that extra action. Countering officers like Demon Lu Bu (and normal Lu Bu) and Guan Yu (normal) can sometimes cheese in some damage because of the extra action. Crystal Serpent and Awakened Bi’An’s gimmicks trigger on attacks so launching that 1 extra might lose the attacker 50% HP (Crystal Serpent) or get them stuned (Awakened Bi’An).
Remember that these can be used against you as well!
TL;DR: Get it, and get it QUICK! Put on Zhuge Liang and equip bro with some good strategems for instant profit! Start maxxing as soon as you unlock Draconic Conquest and watch silly nonsense happening.
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