Guides

How the Kingdom War works, and how to rank in it

21 September 2026·3 minute read

The Kingdom War is the only part of the game you can lose, and the only place Lu Bu comes from. Those two facts are related.

The shape of a week

It opens on Monday at 00:00 UTC and closes on Sunday at 23:59 UTC. A week is named by the date of its Monday, so the settlement you are reading about on a Tuesday belongs to yesterday’s date.

During the week, every point of Honor won by a member is added to their Kingdom’s running total. There is no separate war mode to enter and no window to be awake for. Raiding is the war. If you raid on a Thursday afternoon, that is your contribution.

Honor gained while defending counts identically. So does a camp that holds. This matters more than new players expect: a large share of a committed player’s weekly Honor arrives while they are asleep, from other people failing to take their Copper.

How it settles

Two payouts, decided differently, and confusing them is the most common mistake.

The side

The Kingdom with the most Honor wins the week. Members of the winning Kingdom are paid Merit equal to their own Honor gained divided by ten, rounded down, with a floor of 20 for anyone who won at least one attack. Members of the other two Kingdoms receive half that.

Note what this is not. It is not a flat prize. Your Merit is a function of your own week, scaled by whether your side won. A quiet week in a winning Kingdom pays less than a busy week in a losing one.

Tied Kingdoms share the win. A week in which nobody gained any Honor has no winner at all.

The person

Separately, every member of every Kingdom is ranked by Honor gained that week. The top hundred each receive five Lu Bu shards.

This ranking does not care who won. It is run across all three Kingdoms together, so a player grinding hard in the Kingdom that came last can out-rank a passenger in the Kingdom that came first.

How to rank

The ranking is on Honor gained, so the question is how to gain the most Honor in seven days.

Raid at your ceiling, not below it. Honor scales with the difficulty of what you beat. A string of easy wins against warlords well under your power is Copper, not Honor. Look for targets near your own bracket and accept a worse win rate.

Bank your Copper and let them come. Defending pays. A warlord carrying visible Copper is an attractive target, and every failed attack on you is Honor you did not have to spend Stamina on. Players who bank everything and look poor are optimising for the wrong currency during a war week.

Spend Stamina down before the reset. Stamina regenerates against a cap. Stamina sitting full at 23:58 on Sunday is Honor you did not win, and it does not roll over into the new week in any useful sense.

Keep your retinue current. Generals of your Kingdom fight a tenth stronger, and raid outcomes are decided on power. The cheapest Honor increase available to most players is starring up a General they already own rather than chasing a new one.

Why it was built this way

An earlier design made Lu Bu the prize for completing the achievements list. That was changed, because a list of deeds measures how long someone has been present, which is the wrong question to ask for the strongest General in the game.

Paying him only to the winning side was also considered and rejected. A player in a Kingdom that keeps losing should not be locked out of the game’s best General by other people’s play. Merit already rewards the side, so the war has both shapes: one for the faction, one for the person.

Twenty weeks is a long time. It is meant to be. Nothing else in the game asks for that, and nothing else in the game is Lu Bu.

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