Getting Started: Troops, Heroes and Your Castle
Русская версияThis guide is for brand-new players: what to level from day one so that two months later you are not sitting on a pretty castle with no army.
1. The first decision: pick one troop type
Pick one troop type and level only that one. Infantry, Archers or Cavalry — but one.
Which one is entirely up to you. There is no right answer — there is only one thing to keep in mind:
Why not two, and not all of them:
- There are four camps, one per troop type, and they all cost the same to upgrade. Levelling two types literally means paying twice for the same thing.
- Hero buffs, research and specialty all work per troop type. Spread them out and you end up with no strong troops at all.
- Vehicles do not count as a combat type — they are the weakest and lose to all three others. The mechanics are spelled out in a separate guide. Vehicles are for gathering, not for fighting.
If you have already poured resources into every troop type — admit the mistake, write off the loss and play smarter from here. What is spent cannot be recovered, and carrying on the same way only doubles it.
2. The game has two halves: match-3 and strategy
- Match-3 is what levels your heroes.
- Strategy is the world map: events, Monster Den hunting, fighting other lords.
Leaning too far either way breaks your progress.
Plenty of players focus only on match-3 — and that is exactly why they do not grow. There are a lot of them.
But if you go only into strategy and ignore match-3, you will not be able to level your heroes.
So you need balance. For the first few months: balance, leaning towards strategy.
A hero has two separate skill tabs: one for the map (strategy), one for match-3. They do not work together! Skills from one tab have no effect in the other half of the game.
So look at them yourself and decide which matters more to you.
3. Which heroes to level
First get and level heroes of your chosen troop type. Put those same heroes into match-3 — for lack of anything better.
Civil heroes work from your bag. Their skills take effect simply because you own the hero (at the required level) — you do not need them in your march. These are the ones English guides call economic heroes: they carry a book icon instead of a sword, bow or horse.
A hero grows along two separate axes, and they come from different places:
- Class — only from hero cards and events.
- Level — only from the Mesdi Portal. Nowhere else.
Inside the Portal you can use blitz cards — you will work that part out yourself.
This is exactly where the need for balance comes from: without match-3 there is simply nowhere to get hero levels.
- 2★ heroes are not needed at all — at least until the Alliance Conquest event, which is a topic for another time.
- 3★ heroes that buff your troop type are fine. Level them to 71.
- 4★ are better still and stay useful for a long time. Level them to 131 — no further at first; beyond that it depends on how you do in match-3.
- 5★ heroes lose to 4★ in strategy, and often to 3★ ones too if those are at +5.
Heroes below 5★ cap at +5 enhancement — meaning a 3★ or 4★ can realistically be taken to its enhancement ceiling, while a 5★ needs a very long shard grind. A levelled 3★ beats a bare 5★.
And the reason not to level everyone at once — hero EXP gets dramatically more expensive in steps, which is exactly where the 71 and 131 marks come from:
| Level reached | Total hero EXP |
|---|---|
| 70 | ≈ 368 thousand |
| 130 | ≈ 1.2 million |
| 210 | ≈ 3 million |
| 310 | ≈ 14.2 million |
Plus evolution books at every stage. So: two or three heroes done properly, not ten done halfway.
Heroes you can get for free, from the hunting you are doing anyway: Lucia (3★ Civil, Monster Dens 1–9), Odell (4★ Civil, Dens 8–9), Tutanhet (5★ Archer, Dens 13–29), and Eric / Freya / Eris (5★ Infantry / Archer / Cavalry, Dens 41+, so not soon). The event hunt also drops 5★ Civil heroes — see the Hunt Focus guide.
4. Castle, camp, residences — in what order
What follows is how I think it should be done. Others play differently, and that is fine.
Citadel level requirements are easy to find online, and it is always better to know them up front — you can see what the next level will demand.
The main thing for a newcomer is to get the strongest troops available to you as fast as possible. Playing without spending money, aim for castle level 16 (T6 troops), or better 19 (T7) — whichever you manage — and then immediately level your chosen troop type: the higher the troop level, the stronger they are.
I believe it is better to stop at level 16 and build up your troops than to rush to level 25 and end up with no army at all.
Citadel level requirements
Keep them in front of you: you can see at once what the next level will demand and where it makes sense to stop.
| Lv. | Requirements | Food | Wood | Stone | Iron | Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | — | — | — | — | — | 3 s |
| 2 | Lookout Lv.1 | 2 750 | 2 750 | — | — | 1 min |
| 3 | Chapter 2, Warehouse Lv.1 | 3 000 | 4 400 | — | — | 1 min |
| 4 | Chapter 3, Mesdi Portal Lv.1 | 7 000 | 7 000 | — | — | 1 min |
| 5 | Chapter 4, Archer Camp Lv.1, Warehouse Lv.3 | 11 900 | 11 900 | — | — | 6 min |
| 6 | Chapter 5, Infantry Camp Lv.1 | 21 300 | 21 400 | — | — | 35 min |
| 7 | Chapter 6, Infantry Camp Lv.7 | 40 600 | 40 600 | — | — | 1 h 16 min |
| 8 | Chapter 7, Residence Lv.6 | 81 500 | 81 300 | — | — | 2 h 38 min |
| 9 | Wall Lv.5, Infantry Camp Lv.6, Cavalry Camp Lv.6 | 162 400 | 162 500 | — | — | 6 h 2 min |
| 10 | Wall Lv.9, Warehouse Lv.9 | 324 800 | 325 000 | — | — | 9 h 42 min |
| 11 | Wall Lv.10, Medical Tent Lv.10, Weapon Forge Lv.8 | 626 200 | 629 300 | 6 600 | — | 15 h 57 min |
| 12 | Wall Lv.11, Vehicle Workshop Lv.11 | 1 136 000 | 1 135 200 | 25 300 | — | 1 d |
| 13 | Wall Lv.12, Lookout Lv.12 | 1 917 600 | 1 917 300 | 68 000 | — | 1 d 12 h |
| 14 | Wall Lv.13, Archer Camp Lv.13 | 3 008 700 | 3 012 100 | 151 300 | — | 2 d 1 h |
| 15 | Wall Lv.14, Posthouse Lv.14 | 4 371 600 | 4 394 600 | 292 000 | — | 2 d 14 h |
| 16 | Wall Lv.15, Furnace Lv.15 | 6 037 200 | 5 858 100 | 501 300 | — | 2 d 23 h |
| 17 | Wall Lv.16, Quarry Lv.16 | 7 812 100 | 6 754 300 | 793 000 | 28 200 | 3 d 7 h |
| 18 | Wall Lv.17, Infantry Camp Lv.17 | 10 030 800 | 7 618 900 | 1 219 700 | 75 800 | 3 d 17 h |
| 19 | Wall Lv.18, Embassy Lv.18 | 12 909 600 | 8 220 800 | 1 852 700 | 153 400 | 4 d 19 h |
| 20 | Wall Lv.19, Cavalry Camp Lv.19 | 16 627 600 | 8 319 400 | 2 779 100 | 276 900 | 5 d 23 h |
| 21 | Wall Lv.20, Lumberyard Lv.20 | 21 333 200 | 7 487 500 | 4 118 600 | 466 100 | 7 d 2 h |
| 22 | Wall Lv.21, War Hall Lv.21 | 27 263 800 | 5 061 500 | 6 062 500 | 754 600 | 8 d 9 h |
| 23 | Wall Lv.22, Infantry Camp Lv.22 | 36 124 500 | 6 828 000 | 7 529 700 | 1 189 200 | 10 d 2 h |
| 24 | Wall Lv.23, Cavalry Camp Lv.23 | 47 828 900 | 9 224 700 | 9 261 500 | 1 840 900 | 12 d 3 h |
| 25 | Wall Lv.24, Institute Lv.24 | 63 755 900 | 12 453 300 | 11 197 200 | 2 787 100 | 14 d 14 h |
| 26 | Wall Lv.25, Embassy Lv.25 | 84 285 300 | 16 787 100 | 13 459 000 | 4 180 600 | 17 d 13 h |
| 27 | Wall Lv.26, Warehouse Lv.26 | 113 700 900 | 22 679 300 | 15 922 000 | 6 220 800 | 21 d 7 h |
| 28 | Wall Lv.27, Infantry Camp Lv.27 | 153 041 400 | 30 594 400 | 18 389 900 | 9 138 300 | 25 d 18 h |
| 29 | Wall Lv.28, Vehicle Workshop Lv.28 | 206 299 800 | 41 271 800 | 24 789 600 | 12 336 700 | 30 d 21 h |
| 30 | Wall Lv.29, Archer Camp Lv.29 | 278 298 500 | 55 923 300 | 33 441 100 | 16 753 300 | 37 d 1 h |
| 31 | Wall Lv.30, Infantry Camp Lv.30, Institute Lv.30 | 375 981 200 | 75 216 900 | 45 179 000 | 22 566 700 | 46 d 17 h |
| 32 | Wall Lv.31, Cavalry Camp Lv.31 | 375 981 200 | 94 547 600 | 45 179 000 | 22 566 700 | 57 d 2 h |
| 33 | Wall Lv.32, Archer Camp Lv.32 | 375 981 200 | 113 835 300 | 45 179 000 | 22 566 700 | 68 d 5 h |
| 34 | Wall Lv.33, Vehicle Workshop Lv.33 | 375 981 200 | 133 187 300 | 45 179 000 | 22 566 700 | 80 d 2 h |
| 35 | Wall Lv.34, Dragon's Lair Lv.34, Wishing Pool Lv.34 | 375 981 200 | 152 499 500 | 45 179 000 | 22 566 700 | 92 d 17 h |
| 36 | Wall Lv.35, War Hall Lv.35, Institute Lv.35 | 394 780 000 | 160 124 000 | 47 437 000 | 23 694 000 | 185 d 11 h |
| 37 | no data | 414 519 000 | 168 130 000 | 49 809 000 | 24 879 000 | 278 d 5 h |
| 38 | no data | 435 245 000 | 176 537 000 | 52 300 000 | 26 123 000 | 389 d 12 h |
| 39 | no data | 457 007 000 | 185 364 000 | 54 915 000 | 27 429 000 | 486 d 21 h |
| 40 | no data | 479 857 000 | 194 632 000 | 57 661 000 | 28 801 000 | 1217 d 6 h |
Times are base values — no speedups, boosts or hero/research bonuses; yours will differ. From level 31 the cost adds Tomes, and from 36 the Glory Codex and Gold Statues.
What the table shows straight away:
- Stone is needed from level 11, Iron from 17. Before that, only Food and Wood.
- Levels 3–7 require campaign chapters — the story has to be played, there is no way around it.
- You will still have to nudge up the other types' camps: they appear in Citadel requirements (Infantry at 6, 7, 18, 23, 28, 31; Cavalry at 9, 20, 24, 32; Archers at 5, 14, 30, 33). Do not level them for troops — only to the minimum that unblocks the castle.
- The cost curve is visible in the timers: up to level 15 everything is hours, at 20 it is a week, at 30 more than a month.
How the castle relates to troop tiers
The camp unlocks the tier. The Citadel merely allows the camp to be levelled further.
The Citadel itself does not make your troops stronger. A castle raised higher than your troops allow is power on paper and tougher enemies you have nothing to fight with.
Level your Residences constantly. The more Residences you have and the higher their level, the faster and cheaper you can churn out troops — and troops are vital.
So the order is:
- First reach the highest castle level you can manage — meaning the one you get to without strain and without spending money. For most people that is exactly 16–19, not "as far as it goes".
- Then level your troop type's camp and your Residences.
- Then put everything into troop promotion and building the highest tier you have.
5. Promoting your troops
Here is how: open the troop training page, select the lowest tier whose count is not 0. Bottom right there will be an up arrow. Press it — and your weak troops are retrained into the strongest ones you have.
The sum of "training at T1 + promoting to T10" is exactly equal to training T10 directly.
The same holds for time: promoting from T1 to Tx takes exactly the training time of Tx minus the training time of T1.
So the scheme saves neither resources nor time. Churning out T1 hoping to "upgrade it cheaply later" is pointless.
So what is it good for
- The low tiers you already have are not wasted. No need to write them off or leave them as dead weight — they convert into a real army at no loss.
- You choose the moment the conversion is counted. That is the real point.
Post-Conflict Recovery gives a 30 % time discount on training within a quota: as many troops as you lost in the previous event, plus 20 %. It is counted by power, not by unit count.
Training Master lasts one day and hands out extra prizes you would not get by training troops on any other day.
Combine them: keep a stock of T1 of your own troop type and run the recovery on the Training Master day.
Why this works if nothing is saved: the T1 time was spent earlier, outside the event window. Inside the window there is less work left — so you push more troops through the event. The binding constraint on such events is not your budget, it is the length of the window.
Exactly the same logic as the stamina banks in the Hunt Focus guide and the chests further down: pay in advance and outside, cash in inside the window.
Three rules for producing troops
- Your main troop type — train and promote it to the maximum. Low tiers of your own type can always be raised to the highest tier available to you.
- Vehicles — keep producing them constantly, but T1 only. And never promote them for the next several months.
- The other troop types — do not touch them at all: do not level them, do not build them.
Why Vehicles must not be promoted: their whole point is going out to resource tiles while costing roughly nothing to heal. Raise their tier and you get exactly what you were avoiding — an expensive healing bill for gathering.
6. What not to do in your first months
Do not attack other lords' castles. Some of your troops are lost permanently — as a newcomer you have no way to replace them.
And for a while, do not run Monster Dens on your own. Instead:
- Join stronger players' rallies with ONE UNIT ONLY. That way you take no damage and get more rewards.
- Strong players understand this and will not kick you — as long as you do not bring Vehicles into the rally.
- Send one unit of your highest tier, ideally matching the troop type of the player leading the rally.
- At the very least, never send Infantry to an Archer player.
Gathering: send T1 Vehicles only
Send T1 Vehicles ONLY (!) to resource tiles.
Our kingdom is young: plenty of inexperienced players, plenty of lunatics. You may be a hundred times in the right — but why spend resources on healing? And if you must spend, better to heal T1 Vehicles, which costs roughly nothing, than strong troops, whose healing bill can ruin you early on.
And I would advise not to get upset if you are kicked off a resource tile — early days. Report it to the Diplomat and the Leader, and do nothing else.
It will settle down in time: the idiots get burned, and tile rules will appear.
7. NAP — the non-aggression pact
The topic matters, so there is a separate NAP guide covering what to do if you are attacked. Here is the short version.
NAP stands for Non-Aggressive Pact. The top alliances have agreed among themselves who may be attacked and who may not.
Our alliance is top 3, and our NAP covers the top 15. In theory nobody has the right to touch us, and we have no right to touch players from other top-15 alliances.
So if, against my advice, you do go raiding — ALWAYS (!) check the alliance ranking of every castle first.
Attacking a lord from a top-15 alliance is a disgrace. At the very least you will have to compensate every loss that lord took; at worst you will be kicked out of our alliance and burned. Is it worth it?
The NAP also forbids scouting: if you scouted someone, you are planning to attack them — and then see the paragraph above.
Anyone can hit the wrong target or send a scout where they shouldn't have. That is not fatal and it can be sorted out. People around are reasonably sane: nobody will burn you on the spot, and our Diplomat and alliance Leader will try to settle it.
But deliberately breaking the NAP again and again is the road to being kicked out of the alliance and burned. Everyone can tell the difference between a mistake and a stance.
NEVER go and hit someone back if they are covered by the NAP — even if they attacked you first.
Report the attack to our Diplomat and alliance Leader; they will try to settle the conflict.
8. Chests and cards: hoard them, open them on the right event
Open chests and cards ONLY (!) during the matching event.
- Hero cards are best activated only on Mondays, when the hero-levelling event runs.
- Chests are best opened for gear or for the dragon.
- And even then (!) — only if it is your troop type's week.
Why the week matters
The point is that different weeks hand out hero cards for different heroes.
Say you are a Cavalry player and it is Infantry week — what do you want the infantryman Apan for? It makes more sense to be patient, keep hoarding, and wait for the week when the prize is the cavalryman Boyd. The same goes for Archers.
Opening a chest "just because you have it" means gifting your savings to somebody else's troop type. Patience is worth more here than it looks.
9. About spending money
If you have a lot of money — skip this section.
If you have a little — do not put it into heroes. Buy the builder and researcher packs instead: those genuinely help your development.
Everything else depends on your wallet.
Short version, if you have no time to read
- Pick one troop type and level only it. Vehicles are not a combat type.
- Keep a balance between match-3 and strategy, leaning towards strategy in the first months.
- A hero has two skill tabs and they do not work together.
- Civil heroes work from your bag — no need to put them in a march.
- Skip 2★. 3★ to level 71, 4★ to level 131. In strategy, 5★ lose to well-levelled 4★ and 3★.
- Castle to 16 (T6), better 19 (T7), then stop: camp of your troop type and Residences.
- The camp gives the tier, not the Citadel.
- Remember troop promotion: the up arrow on the training page turns low tiers into high ones.
- Do not attack lords. Join Monster Den rallies with one unit, highest tier, matching the leader's troop type.
- Your own type: train and promote to the max. Vehicles: T1 only, never promoted. Other types: do not touch.
- Resource tiles: T1 Vehicles only. Kicked off a tile — tell the Diplomat and the Leader, do nothing else.
- NAP: check the target's alliance ranking before any attack. Top-15 players are off limits, scouting is banned too, and so is taking revenge yourself — go to the Diplomat and the Leader.
- Hoard chests and cards; open them only on the matching event, and only in your troop type's week.
- If you spend, spend on builder and researcher packs, not heroes.
I have certainly forgotten something, missed something else and not covered some things properly. I am happy to take any questions and fold the answers straight into this guide.
Get in touch
Found a mistake? Got a question about the mechanics? Want a guide on a topic that is not here yet?
Write to pnc.wiki.101@gmail.com — I will fix it, answer it, or write it.
One request in particular: if something in the game does not match what is written here, send a screenshot from the client. A screenshot settles the question faster than any argument, and in these guides it outranks any outside source.