Legion I, Legion II, Legion III, and Class Legion look like pure combat trees, full of attack and resistance nodes for a specific troop type. Buried inside each one is a single node that does nothing but raise Gathering Speed, maxing at the same plus 25 percent in every tree. Nothing in the tree icon or the tree name tells you that node is in there.

🔓 One Unlock Node First

Every one of the four trees gates its Gathering Speed node behind a separate one level unlock node. Legion I needs 95 minutes on its unlock step, Legion II and Legion III need 133 minutes each, and Class Legion needs 125 minutes. None of that time touches Gathering Speed yet. It only opens the door to the node that does.

📈 Same Cap Four Trees

Once the door is open, the Gathering Speed node itself runs 5 ranks in every one of the four trees, printing the same sequence: plus 3, plus 6, plus 10, plus 15, then plus 25 percent at rank 5. Legion I, Legion II, Legion III, and Class Legion all print that exact same five step ladder, confirmed rank by rank in the current build.

⏱️ The Real Time Cost

The ladder looks identical on paper, but the clock does not. Legion I's Gathering Speed node totals about 13 hours across its 5 ranks. Legion II and Legion III each total about 55 hours for the same 5 ranks and the same final plus 25 percent. Class Legion sits at about 17 hours. Add the four unlock steps and all four full ladders together and you are looking at roughly 150 hours of research, before any Alliance Help or speedups, just for these four nodes.

Positive spend: you finish Legion I's cheap unlock and its 13 hour ladder first, banking plus 25 percent while your Institute keeps climbing toward the trees that cost more. Flip side: you open Legion II first because its combat nodes look shinier, and the Gathering Speed rank 5 there alone eats a 28 hour single step before it even reaches plus 25.

🧭 Not Zone Commemoration

These four nodes are a separate system from the Zone Commemoration tree at Castle 10. Zone Commemoration runs on Courage Medals and caps Full-scale Production at plus 50 percent. Legion I through Class Legion run on standard tech research, not Courage Medals, and each one caps at plus 25 percent on its own line. A commander who already maxed Zone Commemoration still has four more Gathering Speed nodes sitting untouched in the combat trees.

Military heroes still carry no Gathering Speed skill of their own, so neither of these systems can be replaced by picking a better hero.

Have you actually opened all four Legion trees, or just the one with the shiniest combat icon?