Ragnar Lodbrok was released in Rise of kingdoms alongside Bjorn Ironside during the Vikings update. He is one of the popular Vikings characters but isn’t widely used by players in ROK. The main reason for that is the availability of better legendary commanders like Guan Yu, Atilla, Pakal, and more. However, if you use Ragnar with the right talents tree and proper commander pairing, he could be quite a useful commander. So, let’s take a look at Ragnar Lodbrok’s talent tree builds, Commanders pairings, Equipment setup, and Skill upgrade order.
Ragnar Lodbrok Skill overview
Power of the King(Active Skill)
Required Rage: 1000
Troops led by this commander deal 30% increased damage and take 15% reduced damage for 4 seconds.
Damage Bonus: 10%/15%/20%/25%/30%
Damage Taken Reduced By: 5%/7%/9%/12%/15%
The Raven(passive)
The attack is increased by 15%. Regular attacks have a 10% chance to reduce the target’s healing effects by 35% for 3 seconds. This effect can only trigger once every 5 seconds.
Attack Bonus: 5%/8%/11%/15%/20%
Healing Effect Reduction: 20%/25%/30%/35%/40%
The Horn’s Call(passive)
Troops led by this commander deal 2% increased damage when attacking cities.
Damage Bonus: 2%/4%/6%/8%/10%
Lord of the North(passive)
Troop capacity is increased by 2%. When this commander launches a rally, rallied troops gain 2% increased troop capacity.
Troop Capacity Bonus: 2%/4%/6%/8%/10%
Rallied Army Capacity Bonus: 2%/4%/6%/8%/10%
Odin’s Might(expertise)
Power of the King – Deals direct damage (Damage Factor 700), causing the target Troops led by this commander deal 40% increased damage and take 20% reduced damage for 5 seconds.
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Skill upgrade order
5-5-1-5
Ragnar Lodbrok’s only first two skills are useful for open-field fights. The third skill is only good for the rally and the fourth one provides a troop count increase which isn’t that good. We don’t recommend spending any legendary sculptures on Ragnar. You can get his sculptures for free using a gold chest. Aside from that Ragnar’s expertise isn’t very good. It will require way too many sculptures for very little value from expertise skill.
Pros
- Very powerful healing debuff
- Free to get using gold keys
- Great normal attack damage
- Good for attacking the city
- can be used with mixed troops
Cons
- way better commanders are available for both rally and open-field
- No march speed for field fights
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Ragnar Lodbrok Talent Tree builds
These are a few suggested Ragnar Lodbrok Talent Tree for open fields and rallies.
Open field

You can use this build for murder ball during ruins and alter. This talent tree focuses on doing sustained damage and staying longer periods on the field.
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Canyons

Ragnar isn’t a great commander for canyons, However, if you don’t have any other commanders then you can use him with this talent tree.
City Rally

While certainly there are better commanders like Atilla/ Takeda available to rally cities, Ragnar isn’t that bad at rallying cities. You can certainly take down some small cities using this talent build.
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Ragnar Lodbrok Commander Pairings
Ragnar Lodbrok is mostly used as secondary but can also be used as primary with some commanders.
- Trajan– Trajan and Ragnar have perfect synergy. Both have great normal damage, can be used with mixed troops, provides increased troop counts and one can give a powerful buff while the other gives a powerful debuff. Trajan’s rage regeneration buff is critical here as you need to keep Ragnar’s active skill up all the time to get the maximum damage. You can use any of these as a primary commander but Trajan’s support tree will give you little better results.
- Saladin – Healing commanders like Richard can be quite annoying during early KvK. Saladin and Ragnar together can greatly reduce healing, both have a 40% healing reduction and luckily Ragnar’s healing reduction skill is passive. So the debuff does stack up. Aside from that, both have damage-taken reduction buff too. Once again use Saladin primary with Cavs to take advantage of the support tree.
- Aethelflaed– Alternate to Trajan you can also use Aethel with mixed troops. Aethel has a nice attack boost when using mixed troops, something that syncs up nicely with Ragnar’s active skill. Together they can do some powerful rebuffing while dealing tons of normal attack damage.
- Sun Tzu – Sun Tzu is a total Rage machine and as previously mentioned rage regeneration is very vital for Ragnar’s active skill. Use Ragnar’s primary to take advantage of his attack talent tree.
- Richard – Richard is very tanky with defensive buffs and healing. on top of that, he relies on normal attack damage to take down his enemies. You can use him as primary and Ragnar as secondary to stay much longer on the field, do tons of normal attack damage and help your ally with powerful debuffs to the enemy.
Ragnar Lodbrok Best Equipment set
Ultimate equipment set
- Weapon: Heart of the Saint
- Helm: Abyssal Visage
- Chest: Dark Lord’s Blessing
- Glove: Revival Gauntlets
- Legs: Revival Greaves
- Boots: Flame Treads
Stat boost from the set
Infantry Attack – 9%
Infantry Health – 4%
Cavalry Attack – 22%
Cavalry Defense – 21%
Archer Attack – 15.5%
Archer Defense – 7.5%
Archer Health – 11.5%
Ragnar Lodbrok isn’t gonna be one of your top-tier commanders so there is no need to go beyond epic equipment for him.