Look, Season 2 of Game of Thrones: Kingsroad has officially kicked off. Titled 'Reach Rider Selections: Roses and Thorns', the new season asks you to pick one of three prominent houses in the Reach region and fight for dominance. This time around, badge returns have been completely tossed out in favour of pure content clear scores, meaning the rat race for the top ranks is going to get considerably more brutal.

Rowan takes the population crown, while Florent dominates the competition.

The three houses of the Reach battle it out based on the seasonal scores racked up by players pledged to each faction. Taking an early lead in the weekly skirmish is House Rowan, effortlessly leaving the competition in the dust with a staggering 48% pick rate. As a reward for securing the top spot, every single player who chose Rowan gets a sweet 3% attack boost buff for a whole week.

Throughout the season, individual tiers are dished out based on cumulative contributions to the house. The top 1 to 5 spots in each house earn the title of 'Chief', ranks 6 to 30 bag 'Greatsword', and ranks 31 to 100 get 'Iron Armor'. Naturally, these different tiers come with varying loot, pushing players into fierce ranking wars. What makes this season particularly spicy is that badge returns no longer count towards ranking scores, meaning a single point from a pure content clear can make or break your fortunes.

Taking a look at the actual Week 1 results, the cutoffs at the top of the leaderboards were nail-bitingly close. The cutoff for the 'Chief' tier—where the best goodies reside—stood at 15,397 points for Tallt, 15,426 for Rowan, and 15,429 for Florent. Talk about a photo finish. The gaps between the highest and lowest cutoffs for the 'Greatsword' tier were also kept within a tight margin of 400 points. Compare that to Week 1 of last season, where the Chief tier gap was roughly 1,000 points and the Greatsword tier stretched near 6,000, and you can see just how dramatically the playing field has leveled out.

Given how tight things are, swapping your house—which is only available for a 24-hour window starting today—has lost a lot of its appeal, mostly because a house switch slashes your cumulative score by 5%. Just keep in mind that house changes will be locked down by September 10 at 8:59 AM.As a cheeky little bonus, the score distribution of the top-performing player is laid out below. If you are looking to squeeze out even a single rank higher, you might want to study the numbers and give it a go.

'Hard Mode - Hell' clear rates skyrocket

Following the update on September 2nd, the Hard Mode for 'Altar of the Abyss: Kraken of the Steel Archipelago' (hereafter referred to as Kraken Raid) was dialed down to Hell difficulty. Fast forward a week later, and clear rates have shot right up. Since every single player on the Altar of the Abyss Top 100 leaderboard managed to clear the Hell difficulty, the actual overall clear rate is bound to be even higher.

Considering that Nightmare difficulty sat at a 73% clear rate, Hell difficulty must have been a relative walk in the park. By the way, the 'Steel Archipelago Kraken Hard Mode Event' wrapped up on September 9 at 8:59 AM. Of course, just because the event has packed its bags doesn't mean the mode is gone; Hard Mode stays open permanently, so feel free to dive in whenever you are ready.

Momentum keeps marching steadily upward

Last week saw a massive reshuffle of the ranking groups. As we always mention whenever a fresh season kicks off, the ranking brackets get a complete overhaul. So, do not wet yourself if a brand-new face pops up on the leaderboard or if a regular suddenly vanishes.

While there have been some minor ripples in the class distribution, most of that can be blamed on the ranking group reorganization. Even so, one trend remains stubbornly consistent: the relentless climb in momentum.The current number one spot in the momentum rankings sits at 363,430. Last week it was 322,536, meaning it jumped by a whopping 40,894 points. On top of that, the top 10 players saw an average surge of 27,738, while the bottom 10 grew by 45,552.

You can thank Tier 5 legendary gear for this upward charge. Because the momentum boost is so massive, players are ditching their old gear even if they are lacking in engraving effects. The addition of new relics also helped pad those collection scores. That being said, since most players are pretty much done with their legendary gear setups, momentum growth is expected to slow down a bit next week.