Lohar's Trial in Rise of Kingdoms: Best Skill Order and Tactics (2026)

Information is current as of August 2026.

Lohar's Trial (Arms Training) is a recurring Rise of Kingdoms event where you must defeat Lohar over and over with a single army. After every victory he grows stronger and gains a new skill — and the event's key feature is that you choose the skill yourself. The order in which you hand Lohar his buffs determines how far you get and how many points you score. Below you'll find the current skill order (the old 2021–2023 setups no longer work optimally), skill descriptions, commander pairings and day-by-day tactics.

Event Rules

The event lasts 3 days, with 5 attempts per day.
Each victory over Lohar awards 10,000 points; your final result is your best training session.
After each victory you pick one new skill for Lohar from the remaining ones — up to 10 skills in total.
Clearing all skills unlocks Legend mode: regular stages give at most 300,000 points, and beyond that your score depends on how many of your troops survive the Legend mode battle.

Current Skill Pick Order (2026)

The main setup, verified across dozens of test runs:

Ancestral Protection
Thrill of Battle
Malignant Venom
Armor of Thorns
No Retreat
Strike of Vengeance
Wild Rage
Surging Strike
Iron Resolve
Will of Battle

An alternative setup that scores slightly higher for some players (worth testing on the first two days): Ancestral Protection → Thrill of Battle → Will of Battle → No Retreat → Wild Rage → Malignant Venom → Armor of Thorns → Iron Resolve → Surging Strike → Strike of Vengeance.

The logic behind both setups is the same: first you give Lohar the skills that are least dangerous to you (shields and gradual ramp-up that you can out-damage), while healing skills and low-health rage skills are pushed to the end, when the battle is nearly won anyway.

What Lohar's Skills Do

Skill	Effect
Ancestral Protection	When Lohar is attacked, 10% chance to gain a shield for 5 sec.; while the shield is active, his troops deal +20% normal attack damage.
Thrill of Battle	Every 10 seconds of battle, Lohar's troops gain +10% attack and defense, up to a maximum of 100%.
Malignant Venom	Each attack applies a poison stack (up to 30 stacks); each stack increases the damage Lohar takes by 1% — this skill works FOR you.
Armor of Thorns	+10% defense for Lohar's troops and +50% counterattack damage.
No Retreat	When Lohar has fewer than 50% troops left: +20% normal attack and counterattack damage.
Strike of Vengeance	10% chance when attacking to land an extra strike (500% of a normal attack); also responds with it to skill damage.
Wild Rage	A dangerous skill: when Lohar drops below 50% troops, he heals back to 30% after 10 seconds.
Surging Strike	When Lohar uses a skill, he restores 100 rage and gains +100% normal attack damage for 3 sec.
Iron Resolve	Lohar's troops gain 200 rage when attacked; your troops gain 50 rage.
Will of Battle	Healing when dropping below 50% troops — the most unpleasant skill, which is why it's taken last.

Legend Mode

After you clear all ten skills, Lohar gains two more: Broken Will (for every 20% of your troops lost, you take +15% damage) and Ferocity (+30% health and +10% damage for his army). In this mode points are awarded for surviving troops, so it only makes sense to enter it with a full set of buffs.

Best Commanders for the Event

The best pairing is Genghis Khan + Yi Seong-Gye (YSG), but it's not available to everyone.
A fallback option is cavalry commanders with high skill damage.
Lohar is an elite barbarian: "damage vs. barbarians" bonuses on commanders and equipment do NOT work against him. Don't bring anti-barbarian builds.
Lohar has reduced damage taken from archers (~20%), so archer pairings are weaker — prefer cavalry.

Day-by-Day Tactics and Buffs

Don't spend all your resources on day one. The first two days are for testing: try both skill orders and your pairings to find the best one. On day three, go in with a full set of buffs:

50% army expansion (the main booster for the top 10);
a bonus-damage item, a rune, a kingdom title, a city skin;
officer and commander buffs, equipment with damage bonuses;
scouting an enemy city for +3% damage;
fighting on alliance territory;
support marches nearby (Alexander, Joan of Arc) for extra buffs.

Rewards

The top ten places in the ranking receive legendary helmet blueprints (previously the reward was universal legendary commander sculptures). If you're not ready to spend army expansion and buffs, feel free to place below tenth — the basic point rewards are collected anyway.

Player Reviews

kokc (a comment on our site): "The old setup" — short and to the point: the skill order that worked in 2021–2022 stopped being optimal after the event updates, which is what prompted us to refresh this guide.

Alexey: "I tested pairings for two days without expansion, then turned on the 50% and all buffs on day three — hit top 4. I used to blow everything on day one and get angry about missing points."

Marina: "I didn't know the anti-barbarian bonus doesn't work on Lohar. Swapped Aethelflaed for cavalry — a 40-thousand-point difference with the same army."

Community Discussion Breakdown

Discussions of Lohar's Trial in the communities split into three topics. First — the skill order: players agree that healing skills (Will of Battle, Wild Rage) must come last, and argue only about the middle of the list — hence the two working setups above. Second — "an event for whales": many consider the top 10 unreachable without 50% army expansion and expensive buffs; that's partly true, but places 10–50 are comfortably taken without spending. Third — the rewards change: replacing legendary sculptures with equipment blueprints was met negatively by some players, although for mid-level development blueprints are arguably even more useful. The community's general advice matches ours: test in the first days, and make the decisive attempt on the last day with full buffs.