Taming Marks and refinement
How the refinement system works, what to push, and how to spend Common and Advanced Taming Marks without wasting them.
Refinement is the second progression system for every pet, sitting alongside leveling. Taming Marks feel deceptively spendable because they sit in your inventory — but the math of refinement punishes spreading them thin. This page covers what refinement is doing under the hood, which stats actually matter, and where to draw the line on spending Advanced Taming Marks.
What refinement does
Every pet has six secondary stats that refinement modifies:
- Infantry Health
- Infantry Lethality
- Cavalry Health
- Cavalry Lethality
- Archer Health
- Archer Lethality
These stack with your governor gear, charms, and hero buffs across every march and garrison the pet’s passive is feeding. Unlike active skills, refinement is always paying out — every event, every rally.
Each pet refines independently. A pet with all six stats pushed high contributes far more than one with all six left at base, even at the same level.
How a refine works
Spending a Taming Mark on a pet randomly increases or decreases one or more of its six secondary stats. You see the result, then choose:
- Accept the roll and lock the new stats.
- Replace with another roll, consuming another Mark.
It’s a gacha layer. You will see bad rolls. The system is built around the cost of rerolling.
The rarity ladder
Each of the six secondary stats sits in one of five rarity tiers:
Grey → Green → Blue → Purple → Gold
A stat starts at Grey and climbs the ladder as you refine it upward. The critical mechanic: once a stat reaches a higher tier, it cannot fall back to a lower one. A Gold Infantry Health stat stays Gold even if subsequent refines push it down within the Gold band.
The ladder is the same color sequence used elsewhere in the game for items and rarity. Don’t confuse a pet’s level rarity (Grey/Green/Blue/Purple/Legendary, by generation) with its refinement stat rarity. They’re parallel systems sharing visual language.
Two Taming Mark types
| Mark | What it’s for |
|---|---|
| Common Taming Marks | Efficient for promoting stats from Grey through Blue. Plentiful from event rewards and alliance stores. |
| Advanced Taming Marks | Required in practice for Purple-to-Gold pushes. Much rarer. |
Common Marks do the early work cheaply. Advanced Marks are the gating resource for endgame stat pushes.
The two stats that matter
Across most late-game combat profiles, Infantry Health and Archer Lethality are the two refinement targets that pay back the hardest:
- Infantry Health layers with governor Health charms and hero defensive buffs on the front-line troops that absorb damage in every fight.
- Archer Lethality layers with governor Lethality charms and hero offensive buffs on the back-line troops that deal the bulk of rally damage.
Cavalry stats are deprioritized everywhere. The dominant late-game formation is infantry-and-archer-heavy; Cavalry refinement is filler.
This doesn’t mean ignore the four other stats — refines that incidentally bump Infantry Lethality or Archer Health are still gains. It means don’t spend Advanced Taming Marks specifically pushing Cavalry stats.
Strategy
A simple rule that prevents most refinement waste: fill the basement before building the penthouse.
- Promote every stat on your lead pet from Grey to Green using Common Marks. Cheap, fast, no Advanced Marks required.
- Promote your two priority stats (Infantry Health, Archer Lethality) from Green to Blue, then Blue to Purple, using Common Marks. Common Marks get less efficient at higher tiers but still work.
- Switch to Advanced Taming Marks only for Purple-to-Gold pushes on your priority stats.
- Stop pushing depth past the point where your next-pet investment pays back more. A second pet at all-Blue contributes more than your lead pet at one Gold and five Greys.
Refinement at F2P depth
Realistic F2P depth across a year of play: one pet at Gold Infantry Health, maybe Gold Archer Lethality, and the rest of your roster cleared to Blue or Purple on those two stats. Reaching multiple Gold stats on multiple pets is not a F2P outcome at normal pacing.
Where the money is for F2P:
- Pick one lead pet for your first Gold-tier push. Lion or Mighty Bison are reasonable picks — both apply to events you care about and both are S tier on the priority list.
- Hoard Advanced Marks aggressively. Don’t spend them until you’ve already taken Infantry Health on your lead pet to Purple with Common Marks.
- Refuse the temptation to spread. A second pet at Purple-Purple beats the same Marks spent climbing a different pet from Grey to Blue.
The “deceptively spendable” trap is the F2P pitfall. Advanced Marks are not generously dropped. Treat them like Truegold — a rare, focused resource.
Refinement at Spender depth
A spender’s refinement push spans multiple pets in parallel rather than maxing one pet at a time. Advanced Marks bundle in spender packs and event shops are abundant enough to push Purple-to-Gold across three or four high-value pets simultaneously.
Where the spending stacks:
- Lion, Mighty Bison, Giant Rhino are the first three pets to push to Gold Infantry Health and Gold Archer Lethality. All three are S tier and all three apply to every major rally.
- Then Cheetah and the Gen 5 pets (Great Moose, Alpha Black Panther) once Gen 5 unlocks.
- Advanced Marks bundles in event shops are reasonable buys at moderate discounts. Direct refinement packs (advertised as “stat-up” or similar) are usually overpriced relative to alliance-store Marks.
Don’t push Cavalry-stat Gold on any pet. Even at full spender depth, Cavalry stats sit below the value of the next Infantry or Archer push.
Common pitfalls
- Spending Advanced Marks on Grey or Green tier stats. Common Marks do that work. You are burning a scarce resource for no extra speed at low tiers.
- Rerolling because one stat dropped within its tier. Within-tier movement is noise. A Gold stat that wobbles within Gold is still Gold. Don’t pay to chase a slightly higher Gold value.
- Pushing four stats at once on the same pet. You will hit material walls before any of them reach Purple. Pick one lead stat, take it to Purple, then start the second.
- Refining pets you’ll outgrow. Gen 1 pets that will be deprioritized once Gen 4+ arrives aren’t worth Advanced Marks. Keep them at Green-tier refinement.