Some Subjugation Mode (Ambition Level 2) Information/Tips

[Valatros]

Not gonna make this a proper guide, because formatting and such sounds very annoying. I just typed it all up in notepad++ as i went through, if anyone wants to use it to make a Subjugation Mode info guide by all means. I only wrote it up because googling for information about this mode gave very sparse results.

Second post has all the playable officer locations, with the caveat that I'm not really sure where to get the officers I started with. I assume they're all at the one location with an extremely suspicious lack of playable officer recruits.

All the below tips/observations are from the perspective of someone playing on Chaos with fully elementally upgraded 5/6 star weapons, but only around level 50-70 with any character and no +Attack upgrades or Academy upgrades bought.

Don't have your Playable Officers be part of your subjugation forces. Don't put them in, no matter what, because they can and will die off on their own for no real reason and you will lose them, and have to go do another entire level at *their* region to get them back. If you send multiple in, you can very easily lose playable officers faster than you can gain them in this mode.

There's no point actually subjugating the bases if you're on Chaos (or higher?). You have to do each region repeatedly to get the playable officers, and you get enough subjugation percentage just B-lining for the base that you have to conquer to open the main base, then the main base officer for murder. I experienced only two exceptions to this, the first of which was only 7% short and was when I was playing Sima Shi and struggling to get anything done in a timely manner (He's really, really bad for this mode with his lightning sword. So bad. But I like him and dammit I wasn't gonna let his level fall behind). The second exception was a level which only had *one playable officer* to recruit, which I started with but lost early on. As a result I only did that level 2 times before it stopped giving me any recruits.

There's no keeping your ally squads alive without constant baby sitting, which isn't worthwhile because of how incredibly useless they are. They're not allies, they're muppets. Squads of playables were little better, and the risk of sending them in was too high. Especially since there's no benefit to subjugating all the bases you have no reason to be anywhere near them when the enemy is, and they will promptly die for no reason. You end up being ally-positive through unavoidable kills conquering the base and a half you need to beat the level, but only barely, and some missions your allies will just decide to throw themselves onto their own spears or something and you'll walk away with 9 dead for no apparent reason. Using defense types doesn't help, using morale-boosted types doesn't help, mixing and matching doesn't help, these bloody muppets exist to die and they are really really good at it.

Elemental weapons seem to have some serious problems in this mode. They're great for regular ambition, but it doesn't proc on the ballistas that are absolutely everywhere and so you end up having to whittle them down from the relative safety of a horse. Even once you get the ballistas clear they're nowhere near as safe as physical/musou setups or as effective in their clearing, you're constantly surrounded by a *lot* of enemy officers and the RNG nature of elemental procs really hurts them. I only use around 15 characters/weapons frequently, though, so maybe most of my elemental weapons were bad at it? Lightning Sword and Revolving Crossbow were the two worst by far (Revolving Crossbow less so, but still very painful to use). Guan Yuanpings swirling cauldron thing was better though, purely because her elemental proc moves at least had the decency to clear everything near here, and the Boomerang was okay too (and very safe if you just threw tornados at your enemies via C6; Zhurong might be the Goddess of Fire with this thing, but *I'm* the God of Wind with it!).

Mounted combat is the way to go when attacking any base with ballistas. Clear them out first (there will usually be 2-3) and if it's an open plain base near another one, keep in mind that the other bases ballistas can and will shoot you too. I found mounted combat most useful, with Sprint - Endurance and Sprint - Shadow being helpful but ultimately not super necessary. Just run circles around the ballista whacking it from your horse and you'll be fine, don't stay on one side of it because your enemies group up and even if you can't get knocked off your horse once you die you have very little trouble falling off it. Weapons that normally attack to the left and right sides alternating can hit the ballista just fine if you turn to face it straight on though, so you can speed things up by doing that then moving a bit.

Rage goes from mostly pointless/unnecessary in the skirmish-spam that leads up to Subjugation mode, to absolutely fantastic in the shockingly body-dense Subjugation mode. Rage is so generally powerful in this mode that I even got good mileage out of characters like Zuo Ci and Cai Wenji using their rage musou just because sure, I'm not moving anywhere with it, but I've got half a dozen officers right next to me begging to die so right here is fine. Characters with *powerful* rages were absolute madmen.

Dueling Musou's, on the other hand, fall out of favor. Characters with Musou's that could hit everything around them instead of just one direction, or even worse one *person*, excelled because any time you have to fight there's a half dozen officers trying to get at you along with their muppet squads.

The final battle has weird difficulty changes done to it for some reason. The regular officers at the beginning, the ballistas, *everything* does less damage and has less health than usual on chaos mode. It's *incredibly* noticeable. But then the Eunuchs all respawn to kick your ass at once and they're on a higher level than anything I'd fought prior. I ended up just blasting them off more than the whole of team rocket combined with the siege spear just to get by, they could 1-2 shot me, there were 10 of them, and that's the one freaking level where there aren't a bunch of conveniently placed Musou/Health batteries along with your named enemies. They all carry Heaven weapons, if it matters to you; all of my characters have Heaven/Earth weapons. I honestly wonder if I did something wrong on that mission (despite having to do it three times because I got murdered) because the eunuchs were so disproportionately powerful.

[Valatros]

Started with: Zhuge Liang, Yueying, Xu Shu, Bao Sinniang, Guan Suo, lost Bao early on.

Zhongyuan Area - Treasure Pike for completely controlling, WHITE ONE STAR ITEM with "Battleaxe" effect, gives the x2 attack buff every time you kill 50 enemies.


Ji Province

<Generic>
Yuan Shao
Zuo Ci
Zhang Jiao


Guandu

<Generic>
Zhenji
Cao Pi
Xaihou Dun


Xiapi

<Generic>
Dong Zhuo
Lu Lingqi
Lu Bu
Chen Gong
Diaochan

Xuchang

<Generic>
Dian Wei
Cao Cao
Cai Wenji
Guo Jia



Jiangdong - Treasure Spear for total subjugation; had Armor Sleeve on it, gives x2 defense drop buff every 50 kills.


Wujun

<Generic>
Xiaoqiao
Taishi Ci
Sun Ce
Daqiao
Zhou Yu


Guangling

<Generic>
Lu Su
Zhu Ran
Lu Xun


Hefei - dang, i finished recruiting 3% short of subjugation...

<Generic>
Zhang Liao
Yue Jin
Li Dian


Jianye

<Generic>
Ding Feng
Sun Quan
Lianshi
Zhou Tai


Jing Province - South - Got a Treasure Bow for total subjugation, has War Shoes effect. It, you guessed it, gives you the speed boost item buff every 50 kills.


Jiangxia

<Generic>
Han Dang
Huang Gai
Sun Jian
Sun Shangxiang


Chibi - Revisited

<Generic>
Lu Meng
Gan Ning
Long Tong


Yiling

<Generic>
Zhang Bao
Guan Xing
Fa Zheng
Huang Zhong
Xingcai


Baidi Castle

<Generic>
Guan Yu
Liu Bei
Zhang Fei
Meng Huo
Zhurong


Jing Province - North - Got a Treasure Axe for 100% Subjugation, containing the ability Rakshasa. Lowers health, but your attack goes up the more you kill, apparently.


Xiangyang - Didn't finish this one before getting that recruit, but i suspect its where i would have recruited some of the other characters i started with and that's why there's only the one.

<Generic>
Bao Sanniang


Changban

<Generic>
Liu Shan
Pang Tong
Zhao Yun
Guan Ping


Luoyang

<Generic>
Wang Yuanji
Sima Yi
Zhang Chunhua
Sima Zhao
Sima Shi


Fan Castle - Was 7% short of subjugating this one after doing it four times. *Soclose*.

<Generic>
Pang De
Cao Ren
Yu Jin


Western Region - Treasure Sword for fully conquering this region, had Shining Warrior on it, increasing attack with more allies nearby. No idea by how much.


Tianshui

<Generic>
Xaihou Yuan
Xaihou Ba
Xu Huang
Zhuge Dan


Tong Gate

<Generic>
Jia Xu
Wang Yi
Xu Zhu*


Wuzhang Plains

<Generic>
Ma Dai
Wei Yan
Jiang Wei
Guan Yinping
Ma Chao


Chang'an

<Generic>
Guo Hai
Deng Ai
Jia Chong
Wen Yang
Zhong Hui

*I actually forgot this guy exists and thought his name was just a generic; it wasn't until later I went through making sure I had all the playable officers and saw a missing portrait, had to spend some time figuring out who it was and finding where he was...

End of it all I got a Treasure Fan, which has all 5 of the previous treasure attributes on it at once.

Not sure if they always show up in that particular order, I just put them in in the order I found them. I suspect they don't, because I died several times and sometimes saw the leading officer change before I recruited them. They always showed up unless there was another playable to recruit on that stage, though, with the exception being the Generic you have to kill the first time to every region.