Crown stealer

*This is about Kingdom Two Crowns.*

**Crown stealer** is a quadruped monster that leaps over walls pursuing the Monarch to attack them, ignoring coins and gems being held, and instantly knocking off the Crown. If a crown stealer picks up the crown, after a few seconds it will be considered as lost forever, whether the stealer is still within the kingdom walls or not.

## Occurring

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>  | Crown stealers are not purely connected to blood moons, they appear more frequent and in increasing numbers the longer you play.—former dev Martin Lindell. 29 July 2019  | „
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Crown stealers are not purely connected to blood moons, they appear more frequent and in increasing numbers the longer you play.former dev Martin Lindell.
29 July 2019
Crown stealers may be encountered on late stages of the campaigns. They first start taking part in Blood Moons (by the third year, after the second winter, passed day 130), and much later, in nightly waves (by the fourth year, after the third winter, passed day 190).
These times though can vary a bit, and Monarchs should be aware of the signs of incoming crown stealers, detailed below.

They may appear running on the ground (and they run faster than any of the mounts) or riding on the backs of a breeder. When the breeder they ride on dies they continue onward towards the Monarch. They will jump over walls and stop at nothing to get to the crown.

### Constellation

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>  | If you look to the sky you'll find clarity in your strategy.—dev Gordon Van Dyke. 13 August 2020  | „
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If you look to the sky you'll find clarity in your strategy.dev Gordon Van Dyke.
13 August 2020
At some moment in the campaign, a very specific set of stars appear in the sky, forming a constellation with the shape of a crown stealer. Once this pattern is revealed, crown stealers will take part in the waves.

### Creaking/squelching sound

When one of them come from a portal, there is a creaky sound that can be heard anywhere on the island. 【  】Stay inside of your walls when you hear it, because they can arrive very quickly after the sound is heard.

### From both sides

On the regular nocturnal waves (not on Blood Moons or counterattack waves), if there are still active portals on both sides of the base, crown stealers can come from both sides. 【  】Do not run too far backwards to avoid having to deal with two of them at the same time.

## Tactics

### Have an army

Crown stealers don't have much health, but they are so fast that archers can hardly hit them while they are running. A way to lure them is to make them run into the base, where archers and knights can more easily hit them and deliver a killing blow. During the leaping animation, the crown stealer takes a short time recover at the end, if you have more than two Knights/Samurai/Ronin/Squires they should be able to kill it before it continues.

Pikemen can also easily kill them behind a wall. You will notice, if you have 2 pikemen, that the first one will stay horizontal with the spear to stab greedlings and the other one will stay diagonal/vertical with the spear to stab crown stealers.

### Build walls

If caught on your own with one, you can hide behind a wall and alternate with going in front and behind it. The leaper's jump there is slow enough for the ruler to hopefully attract the attention of a soldier. So try not to skip wall segments, since they have to jump every single one.

### Set a fire

Crown stealers are vulnerable to fire. Launch fire at them with some catapults fire barrels. If they are on a breeder that has been set on fire, the fire will spread to the crown stealer, thus damaging and/or killing both. If you're riding a lizard, you can combine its fire ability with the wall exploit and not be dependent on an army.

## Trivia

* When the constelation feature was introduced there was a sequence of images in the game files, as if the constelation had been designed to slowly appear in the sky, probably through out the days of a season. This sequence, however, has never been used in the game. The constelation fully appears, all at once, with full opacity, and no frames or fade in effect.

## Gallery

A crown stealer jumping a wall.A burning crown stealer.A crown stealer riding a breeder.Monarch transformed into a crown stealer.
## History

 2020-04-28
 2019-02-04
 2018-12-11
 Introduced.

## References

1. ↑ Also be called **leaper**, **hopper**, or **dethroner**.
2. ↑ In a thread on *Steam* about Blood Moons.
3. ↑ While replying to a gamer on *Steam* who was asking to "remove crownstealers from game".
4. ↑ **“***Myself and our lead artist (Maarten Boot) made it up based on the crown stealer. I did use known constellations as a guide for how we should place the stars.***”**—game director Gordon on *Reddit*. 2 November 2020.
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 As shown in this video by Csatrad. Timestamp: 15s. *Twitch*. 27 December 2018. A crown stealer jumps a couple of times over a single palisade, while burning on lizard's fire.