Beginner’s Guide to Choosing Your Race and Guild in Valannia

Welcome to Valannia! As you begin your journey in this massive multiplayer online (MMO) strategy game, two of the most fundamental choices you will make are selecting your Race and joining a Guild. These decisions are deeply interconnected and will shape every aspect of your experience, from combat to politics and economy.

Part 1: The Foundation — Selecting Your Race

The world of Valannia features a wide selection of eight different races, each possessing unique characteristics, distinct cultures, and philosophies.

Why Your Race Choice is Critical:

1. A Permanent Commitment: The choice of race is extremely important because it cannot be changed once made. The race you choose will accompany your hero throughout the entire game.
2. Determining Your Combat Style: Each of the eight races utilizes a different combat style based on their unique racial characteristics. For instance, if you prefer to play as a powerful mage, the Altari, known for their deep knowledge of magic, might be a race to consider.
3. Defining Your Army: Each race commands a set of 8 different types of combat units. When forming your army, your strategic choice will rely on the units available within your selected race, which fall into categories such as Tanks, Infantry, Magic, Ranged, Cavalry, and Colossi/War Machines.
4. Cultural and Political Identity: Your race determines your initial home (its capital city) and your political alignment. The fate and direction of each race are ultimately chosen by the players who belong to it.

For example, you could choose the peace-loving, telekinetic Zan’Thar, the brutal, war-worshipping Glorbs, or the technology-fueled Tyxen, who seek hegemony using powerful technology.

Part 2: The Mandatory Link — Race and Guilds

Once you have selected your race, this decision immediately limits your options for grouping up. In Valannia, the rules around membership are strict:

• While you can join a guild outside your race, you wont receive the perks and bonuses from the guild.  Only the heroes that belong to the same race as the guild’s chosen race will be buffed.
• As a player, you can only use the heroes and combat units from your own selected race as well. For example, if you’ve chosen the Tyxen race in-game, you will be unable to use heroes or combat units from another race.

This crucial link means that your initial racial choice dictates which collaborative groups and political organizations you can join for the rest of the game.

Part 3: Strength in Numbers — Selecting Your Guild

While you can technically choose to be a lone wolf and focus on professions or adventuring solo, strength is in numbers, and guilds are a core part of Valannia. Going solo with ambitious goals like territorial conquest or strategic power plays is often impossible or at least much harder, as some paths will only open up when you are part of a guild.

Why Joining a Guild is Essential:

1. Unlocking Opportunities and Progression: Joining a guild is about unlocking opportunities you would not have access to on your own. Guilds are fundamental for progress, especially as Player versus Environment (PvE) and Player versus Player (PvP) content becomes more challenging in the advanced stages of the game.
2. Developing Massive Structures and Territories: Guilds are designed for achieving ambitious goals built specifically for collaboration, such as territorial conquest and strategic power plays.
   • They can build a central base of operations called a Citadel (or Guild Castle), which is significantly larger and better defended than a hero castle.
   • They gain power over dominated territories through an influence zone, allowing them to collect a share of resources extracted by non-allied players in that area.
3. Accessing Powerful Upgrades (The Stronghold System): When your guild invests time and effort (and secures a level seven architect and the right materials), you can build a stronghold. This stronghold is the heart of your guild’s power and unlocks a full upgrade system for every member.
   • These upgrades are organized into a skill tree with three main branches: economy, technology, and military.
   • The upgrades cost time and teamwork, requiring no rare resources or coins.
4. Political and Economic Influence: Guilds are crucial political organizations, allowing members to manage resources, develop advanced technologies, and provide general progress at economic, political, and military levels. They are governed by their own politics and internal philosophies.

How To Join a Guild:

1. Navigate to the Valannia Guild hub on the Valannia website or click here.
2. Review the various guilds, their requirements, and anything else of importance. Again, be sure to note which race they have chosen.
3. Once you’ve decided on a guild to join, hit the apply button on the guild’s page. Public guilds allow anyone to apply. Private guilds require an invitation.
4. Tip: Be sure to join that guild’s discord as well to get connected with the guild and its officers. Applications are manually accepted and reviewed. It’s helpful if you update your username to something identifiable as well!

Choosing your race and guild is akin to choosing your future career path and college major simultaneously: Your race (your major) defines your natural talents, the kind of training you receive, and the primary skills available to you, while your guild (your professional network) determines the scale of the projects you can take on, the tools (strongholds/upgrades) you have access to, and the ultimate collective goals you can achieve in the world. Since you must join a guild of your own race, these two fundamental decisions are inseparable.