Starting, surviving, & winning

*This is a strategy page for Classic & New Lands.*

## Starting out

When you begin in *Kingdom*, the first priority should be getting two inner walls and two archers. These simple defenses should hold off attackers for a few nights; enough time to get more subjects. The next priority should be to get as many subjects as possible. Throughout the whole game the player should recruit people; there is no cap to how many archers one can have, and any attack can be repelled with enough archers.

Rabbits are a great way to get coins on the start, as they are easy to hunt and drop one coin. It’s normal to return from exploring and find archers got around eight coins from hunting rabbits, or possibly deer.
Hunting rabbits is always a good source of income, especially since archers who are not in towers or with knights will hunt near the outer walls during daytime. Large, open grassy fields are required for rabbit bushes. Cutting trees and leaving open spaces will allow grass to slowly spread, creating spaces wide enough for tall grass and bushes to form. Reasonable grassy stretches past the kingdom border generate a lot of income from archers. Grass only spreads from existing grass and won't spread past walls or most buildings unless they are in a building state. If you accidentally walled off a grass field, you can upgrade the wall and immediately send your builders elsewhere as soon as possible (e.g, clearing trees, upgrading something else). Since builders prioritize the last order issued, enough time can be bought to let grass grow past the structure.

For the next ten or so nights, level two walls and about three archers defending each side should be enough to keep going. At this point your priority should be getting farms and farmers. Make sure any farms you build have a wall between them & the enemy as soon as possible, so you can safely upgrade the farm to increase coin output. Farmers are very expensive, and can be crippling to lose if you're low on money, so make sure to beef up your defenses. Early expansion is key to survival, and one farm as soon as possible, fully staffed, can easily handle upgrade costs prior to stone. While waiting for money generation from farms, continue getting more workers. You'll want enough builders to have two or three idle in town, enough farmers to fully staff your farm(s), and afterwards more bowmen never hurts, especially because they are very cheap.

### Small tips

* Hold off on upgrading the base too far until you need to, or are confident in your ability to make money. When you upgrade the camp to stone your daily taxes will lessen, ultimately to one a day.
* It may be good to avoid expanding into recruitment camps until you need to, as at all stages in the game it's good to maximize workers. Destroying all trees between your base and the campsite will get rid of it. If you find an open area past the camps that allows wall construction, you can extend the kingdom past the camps and chop down all trees except the two immediately flanking the camp.
* Keep in mind you won't die as long as you have money in your pouch, and if necessary you can drop money on the ground to keep enemies from reaching important buildings or workers, like farmers or catapults. Greedlings will run away once they have a coin in their hands, and a coin is cheaper than a tool. Similarly, you can scout and find the chest of coins in the woods the first few nights and expect to only use a coin or two fending off greedlings.
* The caravan merchant is excellent for getting tools early game, as he'll be more cost-effective than directly purchasing tools. However, you ought to only use him if you're fine with getting any tools, since he'll fill up one random tool stand.
* Remember, if you completely run your horse dry of stamina, it'll take longer before you can run again. It's a good idea to stop running & walk as soon as the horse starts puffing, to maximize speed. If you stop the horse in a grassy area, the horse will eat some grass and fully recover within a second or two.

## Surviving to the late game

Acquiring a second farm is a good idea, just as soon as you've expanded out to it. Around this time as well, finding & upgrading the wooden shrine to stone is recommended. Usually by the time you have two farms, level three walls are needed. It is also nice to have your border walls situated near archer towers, though not entirely necessary. This is also a good time to get the base camp to level four and invest in catapults. Once you have successfully acquired two farms, you should be able to easily sustain most upgrades. If both farms can and are supporting six farmers, you may even start to overfill your coin bag daily. Around now, you should easily be able to keep the builder/archer shrines fully buffed continually. If not, it is reasonable to get a third farm. Three farms should be enough to keep your pouch filled the whole game, unless you expand extremely rapidly. Once you are sure of your income, upgrade your camp fully and assault a portal. It is good to start taking down portals early on, as the amount of enemies spawned once a portal is broken will increase daily (verification needed), and as the game goes on, blood moons become harder & harder, even with constant bowman recruitment, so finishing the game ASAP is the only way to survive.

Always ensure your catapults are up and running as soon as you get them. If you are not near them, you can check the status of both while at the base camp by going to the catapult construction building & seeing if there is an option to rebuild them. Catapults are quintessential to surviving mid-late game, as they can easily deal with any size Greed horde as long as their wall remains alive. Now, at this stage in the game, you'll want a barrier of a few walls between your farms and the portals, as well as most of the towers you can get. Avoid getting towers far away from walls though, since archer towers are practically useless when enemies can just walk by them. At this point, two or three portals should have been destroyed, though before you assault the third or fourth one, it's necessary to have level four walls.

### Small tips

* Any archers on the ground with the same color clothing as the knights will assault the demon portal with the knights, once you choose to go out & fight. Four to six should be able to easily destroy the portal. Keep in mind it is entirely possible none of the knights or archers attacking the portal will make it safely back to the walls, so make sure you have ample backup in the towers and on the ground to defend.
* If you lose all your farms, it is very unlikely you will be able to keep going. Even if you have a good amount of money, getting all the workers back is very time-consuming, along with rebuilding walls and getting more tools, after which you'll have to wait a few harvests to fully recover. Therefore, it is advisable to have at least one farm on each side, in case a side fails to hold its own.
* If a portal is especially far away from your border, and therefore your knights, you ought to wait until dawn to attack, because your attack force might run into a nightly raid midway to the portal otherwise.
* Around day thirty, having both shrines constantly active is necessary to keep your chances of survival high.

## The finale

*This section is about Kingdom: Classic.*
The final portal will be very difficult, and it will likely get more difficult the longer you wait (again, verification needed). So the buildup to this point will be constant running around, collecting money, upgrading, and keeping shrines active. When you destroy both portals on one side, you will temporarily not have to worry about defending that side until the end, but once you've activated the end, both sides will get attacked. If you haven't already gotten three farms, you need to have them. Technically, you can just beef up one side and hope the middle of the beefiness survives, but given the AIs of your workers, you'll be better off making sure both sides can defend themselves. Make sure all your border defenses are upgraded, and make sure to recruit more bowmen every day. It's advisable to also have excess builders; four to six idle when not upgrading is a decent amount, since you should be constantly upgrading any defensive buildings at this point, at any & all positions in your castle.

Since the game immediately ends after you've defeated this final wave, workers losing their coins no longer matters, just as long as you have enough to diminish the hordes of monsters and ultimately kill them at the center. Getting the archer towers and walls at the center fully upgraded is a MUST, just in case, as are the borders. Hopefully, monsters won't reach the center, but it's good to have backup just in case. Defeating the final portal around day fifty is the likeliest maximum amount of time in which you'll still be able to do it; past that, you'll probably get killed by a blood moon. It may also reduce the amount of monsters you'll get at the finale at once if you destroy the final portal right after a blood moon (verification needed), though if you do that, you should make sure your borders are okay & repaired before you attack.

The most efficient way of preparing for the final wave is to go out every day, upgrade defenses as you travel out, collect money as needed, and recruit. Creating portals when you can will help speed up recruitment. Always remember, as well, if you upgrade archer towers past level two, archers will be taken off ground border defense duty to go into them, so make sure you have a few surplus archers on the ground before you do too much tower upgrading, lest you get crippled even before the attack starts. As soon as you have four+ layers of fully upgraded walls (on each side), most of your archer towers fully upgraded & staffed, and ten+ spare archers on the ground on each side, you're probably ready to attack the final portal. Again, remember the archers who go out in this fight may not return, so make sure you have spares waiting by the wall who won't go out with the knights.

Throughout the duration of the fight, make sure to keep your catapults up & running, so get gold from your farms and return home. There's not a lot you can do at the borders to bolster your fighters' efforts other than drop coins to take off some of the horde, so just wait to rebuild your catapults in what should be the safest place on the land: your home. Also make sure to keep a full rack of bows, just in case any tool-less workers can run back to the base in time. Then all you can do is wait to see the outcome.

### In *New Lands*

The game does not end upon defeating all of the available portals. It is possible to destroy the portal embedded in the wall based on either side of the map, but as aforementioned, this will not end the game. To "win", you must build the boat and leave to the next land. If you defeat all portals (including the embedded wall portal), you will have several days of complete peace, but at the end, the wall portal gets rebuilt and will resume attacking.