Æthelflæd Guide & Talent Tree | The Best Free Legendary Commander! (2025)

Æthelflæd is right now the best commander for all free-to-play players as you can purchase her Sculptures right in the Expedition Store. She is the true lifesaver of enormous F2P Players. Beside Alexander the Great, Æthelflæd was released in the huge Rise of Kingdoms 2019 June update.

Æthelflæd

Rarity: Legendary
Britain | Lady of the Mercians
Leadership | Peacekeeping | Support

Æthelflæd Skills

Skill	Description
Arrow of Iron Active	Deals damage to a single target and reduce the target’s attack, defense and health for 5 seconds. Next, deals damage in a front-facing cone to up to 5 enemies and reduces their attack, defense and health for 2 seconds. Direct damage is decent but the 30% def & HP reduction open the huge nuking possibilities with the secondary commander Upgrades Direct Damage Factor: 400/500/600/700/800 Attack, Defense and Health Reduction: 10%/15%/20%/25%/30%
Thunderous Force Passive	Counterattack damage against your troops is reduced. When actively attacking, you have a 10% chance to reduce the movement speed of enemy cavalry and the movement speed of other troops. Slow effect lasts 3 rounds. All that AoE with secondary AoE commander is devastating. Slowing effect against high march speed enemies. Upgrades: Counterattack Damage Taken Reduction: 5%/8%/11%/15%/20% Cavalry March Speed Reduction: 20%/25%/30%/40%/50% Other Unit March Speed Reduction: 10%/15%/20%/25%/30%
Synergy Passive	All troops under your command gain attack against Barbarians and other neutral units, and all Commanders get EXP bonus. Best Action Point saver with AoE secondary Commander. Upgrades Bonus Damage to Barbarians: 5%/10%/17%/25%/35% Experience Bonus:5%/10%/17%/25%/35%
Fortress of Mercia Passive	When this Commander leads a rally attack, all armies joining the rally have higher troop limit. When this Commander is leading at least 3 different troop types, their damage is increased. Upgrades: Rallied Army Capacity Bonus: 2%/4%/6%/8%/10% Bonus Damage (3 Unit Types): 5%/8%/11%/15%/20%
Warrior Queen Expertise	Deal an extra 20% damage to enemies who have been slowed. Flat 20% attack boost, which is pretty huge. Capacity Bonus is also excellent. We are all going to use different types of troops, right?

Æthelflæd’s active skill

Quick Review on Æthelflæd

Aethelflaed Overview

• Crowd control commander.
• Forward-facing 180º area skill = AoE commander. Perfect for farming Barbarians.
• Great debuffs.
• Slow down the opponents.
• Bonus damage and Experience gained from Barbarians & Neutral Units.
• Bonus capacity and damage for mixed-troops marches (which most F2P and new players have)..
• Works fine with almost all Rise of Kingdoms commanders.
• She is free.
• She has the Peacekeeping talent tree, which is definitely the best talent tree for all free players.

Where can you get AethelFlaed?

You have to go through the Expedition and you defeat the campaigns here, get the Expedition medals and purchase her Sculptures from the Expedition (max 3 per day).

The campaigns which have the battle marker and the shield marker give you the Treasure of Warrior Queen, which provides a chance of getting AethelFlaed sculptures.

Start saving and purchasing Aethelflaed once you’re starting out into Rise of Kingdoms because she will help you a lot in the future. She is actually the greatest investment for your Expedition medals.

Even if you have her maxed out already, just keep buying her sculptures because you can use them to donate in the Past Glory Event.

Disadvantages

In the beginning, you’re definitely gonna have a hard time levelling her up if you are a free-to-play player.

However,getting here to level 60 is not that important unless you are using her as the primary commander on the open-field.

It’s recommended to use her on the open field as a secondary commander mostly for be buffing advantages. Using Æthelflæd can be short-lived. She’s not tanky and this is the main reason why it’s not recommended to use her as the primary commander in wars. Her main roles in the battlefield are debuffing and slowing the enemies.

Although she offers some great bonus when she is hosting rallies, in my experience, I was being defeated by AethelFlaed.

She’s not the best commander to use for rallying structures unless you don’t really have any choice. If you are in the actual fighting, I would recommend is use other commanders that have more specificity for full archer/infantry/cavalry armies.

Skill Overview

1st Skill – Arrow of Iron

The first skill can reduce the enemy’s defense and health at once. That does boost the damage factor of your skill by a lot. You can inflict more damage to them!

They are gonna hit you back with that attack reduction of 30%. That’s massive reduction.

2nd Skill – Thunderous Force

When you hit the enemies, they are going to hit you back by a counter-attack. That counter-attack is going to be reduced up to 20%. Now you want to be actively attacking and it is not going to be a problem.

The enemy moving speed will also get reduced. This skill counters cavalry units.

• Cavalry marching speed reduced by 50%.
• Other troops marching speed reduced by 30%

This skill is really good for free-to-play players. It really helps our free-to-play players to counter Minamoto Cao Cao combo. The thing here is that this is a free commander, you get it from the Expedition’s so by just grinding that Expedition and collecting that Expedition coins, you can get Æthelflæd easily.

3rd Skill – Synergy

Very generic skill that we’ve seen it from other Commanders. Excellent for defeating Barbarians and Forts.

It’s still really good for both free-to-play players and P2W players If you don’t want to keep buying that Living Legends bundles for those books.

She is the only legendary commander that is actually going to give some experience bonus.

4th Skill – Fortress of Mercia

Whenever she sets a rally, the person that are going to be joining you guys can bring more troops.

The rally capacity is not going to increase however.

It’s very good for P2W players that are gonna join your rally because then they can bring more Tier 5 units, meaning less people can join your rally, meaning you can fill up it a lot faster.

When this commander is leading at least three different troop types, their damage is increased by up to 20%. This is absolutely insane for a free Legendary commander.

Best Commander Pairings for Æthelflæd

Parimary Æthelflæd	Secondary Æthelflæd

For me what I do most of the time is Alexander the Great as the primary and Aethelflaed as the secondary.

You also actually want to do Richard primary and AethelFlaed secondary ecause you can make your AethelFlaed more tanky while making the most of her buffs! He also has a speed reduction effect.

Sun Tzu + YSG + Mehmed work well with Aethelflaed in term of AoE damage.

Joan of Arc is the best choice if you want to play the support role.

Another epic commander like Osman is also very good commander if you want to bring a lot more troops. Similar with Frederic.

Just a note, when you equip gears to AethelFlaed what I would recommend using gears that have multiple stats for different kinds of troops. she would really benefit from it and when you have mixed troops in there you have to portion your mixed troop maybe 50/25/25 so you gotta utilize the equipment.

She is a good pair for Baibars because of his first skill, which is able to slow down the enemies.

Belisarius is another great option for Free-to-play players. His skill doesn’t have the slow down effects. However, he has a talent that has the chance to slow down the enemies. He also reduces the attack/defense of the enemies by 30%, which is pretty insane.

Recommended Talent Trees for Æthelflæd

Mixed Troops

This talent tree is the best if you are performing any mixed troops Aethelflaed marches. Click here to see the web version of it on roktalents.

Specific Troops

This other build this is going to be more for open field battle. You want to go full archer/cavalry/infantry when using this build. Click here to see the web version of it on roktalents.

When using this build, you can even use Pelagius or Baibars if you’re going for Cavalry. For Archers, using YSG or Herman, Kusunoki is great as well!

Æthelflæd Farming Talent Tree

Click here to see the web version of it on roktalents.

If you are using her for Barbarian Hunting and Barbarian Fort Rally, this is the talent tree that’s going to work at the most efficient way for you.

You get a lot of great things here, almost all of the Peacekeeping path and a little bit on the support just for additional rage regen and a little bit of skill defense from the Barbarians, giving you more survivability, giving you more AP saved in the long run.

Video Guide

Summary

Æthelflæd is a very great commander. She is a free commander and everybody should have her. That’s all I want to say!

If you are a free-to-play player, she is definitely the best commander for you!