Leveling Up, Equipment and Cash shop

All of the Tiger Knight game modes will give you a combination of General EXP, Solder EXP, Copper (basic currency) and Prestige. The only mode that doesn’t give soldier EXP is Duel mode because your soldiers of course do not follow you into battle, so instead you gain Exploit points. Exploit points are special points you use to gain rare special weapons and armor types that is outside your faction progression. For example, if you earn enough points you can unlock a special quality halberd weapon without following the Wei soldier faction, etc.

General EXP is for your main character and will level you up, soldier EXP is used to upgrade your soldiers to get them better equipment and to move up the ranks to unlock more advanced tiers and soldiers.

Prestige is similar to soldier EXP, but you can also use it to unlock new Adjutant soldiers (your right hand man), or used to force level up your soldiers to skip out training them up in battle. For example, a soldier needs 5,000 EXP to rank up to the next tier, but they only have 1,000 soldier EXP from combat, you could use 4,000 prestige to cover the gap to forcefully level them up, but the only downside is that prestige is earned at a very slow rate, so it is pretty difficult to get more of it.

As you level up and get higher in level, you also unlock new missions and stages for you to play which adds complexity and variety to the game.

As for the cash shop, the developers say they are aware that no one wants pay-to-win gameplay, so for now the only cash shop items are small things like healing supplies, fire arrows, horse whistles to summon a horse in battle, character rename cards and customization, and other small items. There was talk about weapons and armor being in the cash shop, and so far the idea is that if your main character’s level is lower than the equipment requirement then the armor will debuff down to match your character so that it isn’t overpowered.