Do not spend money on Game of Thrones: Conquest until you know how it works. (We just replaced our phone and we did not save our game so we start over. HA Ha.) Or at least set a budget for app purchases for the month.
Join an alliance. (You get free gifts, but some take this game seriously, so sometimes a mixed blessing.) You will never know how serious your fidelity is until you join. They may ask you to join the Discord app. Again, you do not know until you try.
Do the daily tasks in Game of Thrones: Conquest. Collect daily rewards. Train your troops. Upgrade your buildings. Research. Do the challenges.
Hunt creatures as much as possible. See the highest level you can attack and defeat with your troops. If you have many troops, someone strengthens your fidelity with half of them. You will be constantly attacked so be ready for all your troops to die.
Check-in and get your free gifts. (Look at the messages.) A couple of months ago, they gave away 10,000 gold, because it's such a glitzy game.
Depending on your level, march size and gear, in general, allow you to kill creatures at a certain level in Game of Thrones: Conquest. Find the type of squad you mainly use and create that tool. Look through the blacksmith and find the best equipment for what you need. In terms of space, the lower SoP units have weaker creatures.
Also note that for older special equipment sets, the creatures no longer lose the craft material all the time - you have to wait for special events to get "Advanced Crafting Materials" for these sets. This only applies to the special sets named after people/houses from the series (examples: Stark, Dothraki, Faith Militant, etc) but does not apply to the usual equipment that does not use "advanced craft materials" (Examples: Straw Hat, Bronze ring, etc). These use only common craft materials and you can grow all kinds of creatures for common craft materials at any time.
We would focus on upgrading our warehouse and whatever you need to upgrade for each holding level. Go to k19 and it will go well.
You should invest your knowledge for the dragon, focusing only on the Hatchling scene in Game of Thrones: Conquest! The Hatchling scene has the best (start) buffers in the game. They affect all your troops, not just your dragon march. Save your dragon lore and focus on combat stats. Ignore all the dragon-collecting nonsense.