I won’t go into much of an introduction of the game, since I’m sure you already know what it is, I’ll just get into how I feel the best method to play it is. I will start with my army code is TVU23. Feel free to send me an invite.

Stats:

There are four main stats that allow for actions in the game to be taken(and more that effect the results.) Gold, Health, Mana, and Spirit. Gold is acquired by completing quests and battling other armies. Quests in general are a much better means of earning gold. Gold can also be acquired via your “Land” which I will talk more about soon. Your health is what keeps you alive, and taking damage from battling other armies reduces your health. When it reaches too low of a level, you can not battle armies and have to wait time (Health regenerates over time, more on that later), or Pay the priest to heal you which costs gold. Mana is spent to complete quests. As quests go up in level, and the rewards of gold and experience go up, the cost of mana increases. So the more mana you have, the quicker you can earn gold and experience. Lastly, Spirit is used to battle other players armies. It only costs 1 spirit to attack, and it regenerates quickly, so you can battle other players very often. The downside is that the rewards from battle are usually not as rewarding as quests.

Land:

Under the land category are buildings that you can purchase that will earn you gold. The lowest level building is a farm. One very important note, The cost of a building starts low and increases for each purchase. ie your first farm will cost 50 gold, and your second will cost 55 gold. But the income from them is still 1 gold. That said, MAKE FARMS UNTIL ITS MORE EXPENSIVE THAN A LUMBER MILL. You can do some simple math, and compare a farm to a lumber mill. The lumber mill gives 5 times more income than a farm. But the cost is more than 5 times initially. So buy farms until the cost of the lumber mill is less than 5 times the cost of the farm. This theory holds true for all building purchases.

Armies:

One of the main facets of the game is that its an MMO, and you can comment to and join armies with other people. This is done via an invite code system. As stated, my code is TVU23. Most codes are 5 or 6 characters long and there are two ways to grow your army. Invite or be invited. You can invite via the recruit menu, which looks thru your iPhone contacts and sends them invitations, or by manually typing in a code under the “My Army” menu. The best way to be invited is by posting your code as a comment on other players profiles. You can get there by tapping on a player name via the battle screen. Growing your army is important for a few reasons, but its also important not too grow it too fast. Certain quests have restrictions on them by the size of your army. ie, you can’t complete them without an army of a certain size. Secondly, the size of your army effects how many soldiers you have when attacking other players, and defending when you are attacked.

The reason its not a good idea to grow to fast is because the game seems to give battle opponents within 1 or 2 of your army size. If your army size is 10, you won’t be able to attack players with an army size of 2. For example, if you had a lot of friends playing the game, and they all joined your army right away, you’d be very low level with an army that is very large, and put yourself at a disadvantage. Once you start growing your army, you need to equip them, which brings me to….

Armory:

You start out with an army of one. And when you battle, each member of can use 1 weapon, 1 armor, and 1 spell. I will address spells separately, but it is important to keep your army properly equipped. One of the first quests requires a dagger, so go ahead and buy that. Then you will need the short sword for the same reason. The first items that you will want to buy in bulk are short swords and small iron shields. The main reason for this is that they are affordable and provide good stats (attack and defense) for their gold cost, and they have no upkeep. You will wind up using these for quite a few levels, so they are good value. Consider buying other weapons and armor if they are pre-requisites for quests, but otherwise, stick with the most stats per gold. The next upgrade you will want is Leather Armor. It is solid attack AND defense for a good value (120g) and has no upkeep. Buy as much of this as you have army members.

Spells:

Spells are an exciting part of the game, but sadly I can’t really recommend them. Why? Mainly the upkeep cost. Currently at level 12, I have only bought 1 fireball spell and 1 Force Shield. And the only reason I bought them was they were pre-requisites for a quest. Combined they have an upkeep of 7 gold, thats 2 farms and a tavern, just to pay for them. If you like the idea of spells, then I guess you need to hope that the game gets balanced in their favor. Right now, they just aren’t worth it.

That’s all for now. Come back later for Part 2 of this walk through, where I take you thru which quests to do for the fastest progression thru the game.

Update: You can now continue on to part 2 of the Kingdoms Live guide
In Depth look: Armies and Battles
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