Look, let's be honest—on September 30, Game of Thrones: Kingsroad wrapped up its regular season, 'Roses and Thorns'. After four weeks of fierce competition, the final report cards are finally in for everyone who took part in the seasonal chaos. KookminTree has kindly put together a breakdown of what actually went down this time around.

The second regular season brought fewer variables to the table, for better or worse.

When this second season kicked off, players were met with quite a hefty shift. The developers decided to scrap the submission of seasonal tokens from how family ranking points were calculated. Why? Well, blame it on RP. Handing over those seasonal tokens meant burning through RP, which turned into a right royal pain in the neck for the player base. Some folks managed to get ahead by crafting RP-recovery items like Summer Scent ahead of the season, while others had to grind away endlessly just to keep their heads above water. Introducing RP to supposedly cut down on daily chores ended up completely backfiring.

Naturally, the community welcomed the removal of seasonal tokens from the rankings with open arms. But as the second regular season rolled on, Game of Thrones: Kingsroad promptly drove straight into yet another wall: the point gaps across seasonal content were painfully narrow.

Game of Thrones: Kingsroad features a total of five seasonal modes. You have your permanent staples—the Altar of the Abyss and the Altar of Memory—alongside season-exclusive activities like the Worm Trail, Elite Hideout, and Beyond the Wall Expedition. Among these, the Altar of Memory and Beyond the Wall Expedition simply became far too trivial. The clearance time gap between the 1st and 100th place in the Altar of Memory barely scraped past 10 seconds, while the top 16 players in the Beyond the Wall Expedition all posted the exact same score.

Naturally, competition concentrated heavily on the remaining three pieces of content. Within the party-based modes, rankings quickly stagnated around specific fixed lineups, leaving lower-momentum players out in the cold. With things locked down like this, the upper echelons of the family rankings barely budged an inch from week one.

Of course, the development team wasn't just sitting on their hands watching the fire burn. According to the improvement board, they have already stated they will review how points are calculated within the seasonal rankings. Furthermore, a developer's note published on September 22 indicated that feedback from season two is already being fed directly into season three.

To top it all off, the September 30 update introduced a solo mode for the Elite Hideout and tweaked the scoring criteria for the Beyond the Wall Expedition, showing a steady effort to keep the seasonal rankings on life support. For those planning ahead, the next regular season will kick off on October 14, following a two-week pre-season.

Mercenary popularity and actual performance are walking in opposite directions.

In Game of Thrones: Kingsroad, players have the freedom to level up all three available classes. Naturally, most tend to funnel all their precious resources into one main character—a trend clearly visible in the momentum rankings, which only showcase the single character with the highest momentum score per account.

Take a peek at those momentum rankings, and you'll notice mercenaries sitting at a mere 17 percent share within the top 100. That's less than half of what assassins pull off, and completely incomparable to the undisputed king of popularity, the knight.

Shift your perspective just a fraction, however, and the story changes completely. Mercenary representation in the Altar of the Abyss and Elite Hideout rankings hits 30 percent and 29 percent respectively—a hefty jump from their momentum ranking numbers. If you narrow the lens down to the top 30 in the Altar of the Abyss, that share skyrockets to an overwhelming 40 percent.

Players point the finger at delayed balance patches as the root cause of this odd phenomenon. Real appreciation for mercenaries only started picking up after the August 19 update. While that patch expanded gear tiers, it arrived a bit too late for most players to realistically redirect their heavy investments away from their main characters.

Even so, once the awkwardness of the rampage skill was ironed out, the mercenary's true strengths started to shine through. We are talking about screen-clearing area-of-effect skills, massive burst damage, and a raw sense of physical impact that other jobs struggle to replicate. In fact, many players first get pulled in by the sheer satisfaction of throwing punches with gauntlet-wielding mercenaries, so that tells you everything you need to know.

Meanwhile, the September 30 update brought some long-overdue adjustments to the assassin. Removing wound stacks now grants an attack speed buff, making it far easier to slap those stacks back on in a hurry. On top of that, damage outputs for Spinning Kick, Dagger Throw, Flash Slash, and Rapid Slash have been bumped up, alongside a buff to the enhanced version of Spinning Kick. Given the assassin's current lackluster standing, we can only hope this update breathes a bit of fresh air into their prospects.