Once, there was a glorious kingdom where peace and prosperity reigned. However, all that changed when the vile spirit Malethar seized the orb – the source of the kingdom’s power – and drained it of its power. The once-fertile fields withered into a barren wasteland, and the skies grew dark and grim. It seemed that all was lost.
Or so it would seem. As fate would have it, the king of the fallen realm would cross paths with the orb once again. And as he held it in his hands, the orb sputtered back to new life.
In Kingland, you play as a king (no name given, maybe “King” actually is his name) who has stumbled upon the orb of legend. As a new sovereign, it’s your job to build a new kingdom and create a bastion to stand against the darkness. To do that, you’ll need to gather resources, build structures, make allies, and clash with the forces of evil. Kingland is available on the Google Play Store and the App Store.
Kingland has two distinct game modes: the city building phase and the survivors-like action segment, though both modes use the same survivors-like gameplay. Despite the game’s backstory (and how I’ve hammed it up), Kingland is very much a relaxing casual game that’s easy to pick up and learn. If, however, you’d like a head start on what to expect from the game, you’ve come to the right place!
In this beginner’s guide to Kingland, we’ll be covering:
- Establishing Your Kingdom – the barebones basics you’ll need to run your kingdom: gathering resources, building, upgrading, villagers, and more.
- Fine-Tuning – now that the basics are done, let’s jump into some other ways to improve your economy, such as getting gear for your king, his passives, merging villagers, and more.
- Striking Back – how to play survivors mode, the other half of Kingland.
Lastly, if you’re looking for a TLDR, feel free to jump to the “Quick Tips” subsections.
Establishing Your Kingdom – The Basics
The first task you’ll need to accomplish in Kingland is establishing your territory. Despite the state of the world, the orb that you’ve recovered will allow you to repel the darkness just enough to rebuild your fallen kingdom.
Quick Tips:
- Gather resources by moving up to them. Your king will automatically whack the resources, which will drop as pickups.
- The king can hold an infinite number of resources.
- Resources regenerate on their own after a while.
- You can use ad boosts to gain temporary, powerful buffs to assist in gathering.
- To upgrade or build a structure, park yourself on the indicated tile (there’s an inward arrow on it) beside the building and wait a bit.
- Don’t forget to upgrade structures to improve their efficiency and to get some account exp.
- Villagers allow you to automate resource harvesting.
- Villagers must be assigned to a building to gather resources. The resource type they will gather is tied to their workplace, though keep villagers will gather all types of resources.
- When building resource gatherer buildings, you’ll always get a basic villager for that structure.
- The other ways to get villagers are to upgrade your keep level (gives you special villagers during certain story events), free prisoners that you find on the map (sometimes free, sometimes costs gems), or just buy more from the item shop.
- There’s no point in spending for more villagers if there’s nowhere to assign them to. Make sure you have a workplace for your new hires, especially if you’re going to buy villagers with gems!
- Resource buildings can only hold a certain number of resources. Be sure to collect them regularly to prevent bottlenecks.
- Upgrade resource buildings whenever you can as this both unlocks more worker slots and increases the size of the depot, allowing the building to stockpile more resources before stopping.
- Chests occasionally appear on the map. You can tap on them to open them and get their goodies. While most chests require you to watch an ad, beware – some of them require gems (premium currency) instead. Don’t just spam tap when opening chests.
- As a general rule, you can double gains (by watching an ad) on any item that comes from chests. This is best used on potions, blueprints, and gems.
- You can watch ads to get resources. Offers will cycle on the left side of the screen.
- Your kingdom will occasionally be invaded by Malethar. The skeletons he summons will stop villagers from entering the red area and prevent resources within the red area from respawning.
- To defeat an invasion, simply drive up and whack all the skeletons until they die. Killing all skeletons nets you a free chest (really, no ad this time). This chest drops a variety of resources, but more importantly nets you some potions.
- Later on, you will no longer get invaded. To fight and gain potions, you need to invade Malethar’s fortresses via the sailing menu.
- Sending units to attack Malethar requires soldiers. Soldiers are generated over time by other towns. You can develop these towns in the sailing menu.
- Make sure your army is always busy, as attacking Malethar yields great rewards such as gear chest keys, potions, Light Shards, and even villagers!
- Always do your main quest. You can see your current main quest in the upper part of the screen.
Gathering Resources
The first thing you need to build a kingdom is resources – wood, stone, metals, and food. Harvesting resources is simple – just walk up to them and your king will start smacking them. These resources will drop as pickups, which you’ll automatically pull in. Yes, this is slow, but you’ll get a horse early on that will make harvesting more tolerable.
You can see how much of each resource you have by looking at the upper-right part of the screen. There’s no limit to how many resources your king can hold at once. Resources will regenerate on their own after a while, so you can’t get locked in an unwinnable situation.
You can also make use of ad boosters to make manual harvesting more efficient. Any time this pops up…
…you can tap on it to watch an ad and gain a few short-lived but potent buffs, such as increased harvest speed, bigger harvest radius, or movement speed. Make sure to maximize these buffs while they’re up!
As your account levels up, you’ll gain access to more resource types.
Building and Upgrading
Once you’re happy with your hoard of materials, it’s time to use them. At the start of the game, you’ll only have the keep (your central structure). To upgrade the keep, simply park your king on the indicated tile:
When you step on this tile, a green bar will appear to confirm if you want to deposit your resources in that building – if you accidentally step on the tile, you can leave before the bar fills up. If you stay, resources will be (slowly) siphoned from your inventory and into the keep. Once you’ve met the required resources, the keep will upgrade by itself.
Building structures is done in the same way, though note that structures are unlocked by keep level and can’t be manually placed. To provide the construction materials for a building, just park on the designated tile; once you’ve offered enough resources, the building will magically appear.
Remember to always upgrade your buildings to make them more efficient and get some sweet, sweet account exp!
Villagers
Gathering the materials needed by yourself is fine and all. But remember – you’re a king, and what’s the point of being a king if you can’t order others around?
That’s where villagers come in. While deployed, villagers will gather resources (much like you do) and deposit them in a depot. By increasing the number of villagers working in your kingdom, you can improve your passive resource generation rate and grow your kingdom more efficiently.
Villagers must work at a building to gather resources, and the building a villager works in determines the type of resources a villager can gather. For example, villagers assigned to the farm will only gather food, while those at the mason will only gather stone. The exception to this is the keep – villagers assigned there will gather everything, with one villager per resource type. Make sure you’re assigning people to the right workplace.
Building a new resource building will net you a free villager for that structure, but there are other ways to get villagers:
- Upgrade your keep level. This will give you some starter villagers.
- Free prisoners that sometimes appear on the map. Sometimes you can free them by watching an ad, and sometimes you’ll have to pay gems.
- Buy more villagers from the item shop. This costs gems.
Be mindful that getting more villagers is pointless if there’s nowhere for them to work – this is especially important if you’re using gems to get villagers.
Resources that villagers gather will be dumped into a stockpile at their workplace. Now, this stockpile can only hold so many resources. When a stockpile is full, you’ll get a helpful “full!” notification beside it to remind you to pick up your goodies. Annoyingly, this doesn’t seem to work with the keep.
As your king has infinite inventory space and a full depot means villagers aren’t going to be doing anything productive, be sure to always gather your resource pickups. And while you’re at it, be sure to upgrade your resource buildings whenever you can as this will not only unlock more worker slots (the required level is denoted on the locked slots) but also increase the size of that building’s depot!
Chests
Chests, for some reason, are strewn about everywhere in your new kingdom. Each of them has several useful resources as well as buffs.
Open these at your discretion, but be mindful that some of them require Gems – the purple premium currency – to open, so don’t mindlessly click on the button!
Lastly, any resource that comes from a chest screen can be doubled by watching an ad. This isn’t too important for common stuff like food, wood, and stone, but things like gems, blueprints, and potions are well worth the extra ad.
Ad Boosts
If you’re desperate for more resources, you can use ads to increase your stores.
These won’t see much use at the beginning of the game – where upgrade and building costs are low – but as you make progress, keep these in mind as they’ll be useful for speeding up expensive upgrades.
Invasions
Occasionally, the evil spirit Malethar will appear to mess things up in your fledgling kingdom by summoning an army of skeletons. Admittedly, he isn’t trying very hard – the skeletons he summons are frail combatants that will easily break when faced with your king, though note that while an area is under an invasion, your villagers can’t enter it, nor will it spawn resources.
To repel an invasion, simply drive your king over to the skeletons and beat them up. Slay all the skeletons to clear the event. If you need to heal, just step out of the red zone as the skeletons won’t be able to leave it.
Once all the skeletons are dead, a chest will appear, which contains a variety of resources – including the all-important potions, which are used to upgrade your king’s skills. We’ll talk about that in the next section.
Sailing
As you progress through the game, you’ll find that Malethar will no longer attack you as frequently. We still need those potions, though. If he won’t fight us, we’ll need to bring the fight to him. This is where the sailing system comes into play.
Sailing is like a secondary exploration mode. While sailing, you can find treasures and prisoners strewn around in the sea. More important are the evil-looking islands, which show Malethar’s forces. To pick a fight with him, sail to one of his islands and dispatch your army.
Each battle with Malethar’s forces consumes a certain number of soldiers. You can see how many soldiers you have via the helmet icon on the upper left of the screen. Unlike your other resources, soldiers are replenished via your other settlements. To get more soldiers, you’ll need to unlock and develop these other settlements by sailing around.
As fighting Malethar’s forces yields a large number of blueprints, Light Shards, gear keys, and even villagers, be sure to always deploy your army!
Focus on Your Main Quest
Your current main quest in Kingland is indicated in the upper part of the screen.
Always work towards accomplishing your main quest as you won’t be able to reach the next account level without completing them. If you need help finding the objective for your main quest, you can tap on the objective to zoom in on it.
Fine-Tuning
We’ve got a good production base running, but it can be better. Faster. More efficient. In this section, we’ll walk through the various ways you can improve your kingdom in Kingland.
Quick Tips:
- Use potions to buy passives for your king. Each point in a passive tree nets you a slight boost.
- Once all trees have been completed, you’ll need to sink potions into the ascension passive. The ascension passive requires more potions per point than the other trees.
- Your king can equip six pieces of gear. Gear grants your king a boost to his stats.
- Gear is reliably acquired from the item shop. You can spend keys or watch an ad (long cooldown) to open a chest. Each type of chest has a different pity counter, but all of them have hard pity at 30.
- The most reliable way of getting keys is survivors mode.
- The rarest chest, which can yield legendary items, only accepts gems.
- Gear gives stat bonuses while equipped. Your king has six equipment slots – weapon, helmet, armor, relic, and two rings.
- To get gear, play through the story quests or open gear chests in the cash shop. If you don’t want to spend gems, you can watch ads or use keys, which can be farmed in any survivors mode.
- Gear can be upgraded by spending blueprints. Blueprints can be bought from the shop (there’s a free ad cooldown pack) or earned via different game modes.
- You can get a partial refund on spend blueprints. Do this by tapping the “refresh” button when looking at an upgraded piece of gear.
- Gear comes in different rarities: common (white) -> uncommon (green) -> rare (blue) -> epic (purple) -> legendary (orange). The higher the rarity, the better the stats, the higher the level cap (via blueprint upgrades), and the more passives unlocked.
- To increase the rarity of a piece of gear, you need to merge it with two other identical pieces; 3 common gears make 1 uncommon one, and so on.
- Like gear, villagers can be fused to improve their performance and get more passives.
- To fuse villagers, they must all be assigned to the same workplace.
- It’s harder to earn villagers than gear, so I suggest not fusing villagers until your buildings are fully staffed.
- Kingdom perks are acquired by trading in Light Shards at your keep.
- Light Shards require a magnet and occasionally some other items to harvest. Glowing Light Shards can be pulled out of the ground by going near them and spending materials. New Light Shards become available as your account levels up.
- To get magnets, go to the trader and trade in some food. The trader also lets you trade for intermediate products like planks, gears, and big fruit.
King Passives
We ended with potions in the first segment, and I said they were all-important. That’s because these purple vials are required to purchase passive upgrades for your king. To access your king’s menu, tap on the crown on the left side of the screen…
…which will bring you to your gear and passives.
Passives for your king are divided into four:
- Harvest – affects how fast your king chops resources.
- Horse – affects the king’s movement speed.
- Health – affects how much health the king has.
- Strength – affects how much damage the king does in combat.
By spending potions on each of these passive trees, you can improve your king to make him move faster, harvest better, hit harder, and last longer.
Once you’ve maxed out each of the trees, you’ll need to invest potions into the ascension passive, which costs more potions per point than the prior trees.
Gear
Gear isn’t just for show. By equipping powerful arms and armor to your king, you can help him be the best he can be.
The king can equip six pieces of gear: a weapon, a helmet, armor, a relic, and two rings. Each piece of equipment that he dons gives him increased stats, which will help him survive and thrive in both combat and harvesting.
Getting more gear is straightforward: you buy it from the item shop. Yes, you’ll occasionally get random pieces of equipment from opening chests, but the most consistent way is to buy gear chests. To open a chest, you can either spend a key (more on that in a bit) or you can watch an ad to open a chest. Ads have a rather long cooldown, so go for the ad chest whenever it’s available.
The better the gear chest, the higher the quality of the key needed to open it. Silver keys for blue chests can be reliably earned in any survivors mode (hot air balloon or secret portal), while gold keys can be earned in the same battlegrounds but require you to watch an ad (which compromises your performance in those modes). There’s also a pity system in place – blue chests are guaranteed to yield a rare item in 30 pulls, while purple chests have a guaranteed epic in 30 pulls. Unfortunately, the highest tier of chest (which can drop legendaries at a low rate) can’t be opened by any key; you’ll have to shell out 300 gems per chest.
Gear can be upgraded to improve its stat boosts.
To upgrade a piece of gear, simply tap on it while in the gear screen, and then tap the upgrade button. You’ll need to spend blueprints to upgrade gear; the higher its level, the more blueprints you’ll need. Note that blueprints are exclusive to each piece of gear – weapon blueprints, for example, are used only for upgrading weapons.
Luckily, getting blueprints is easy: just play survivors mode or buy blueprints in the item shop. There’s a free (ad cooldown) blueprint pack available, so be sure to jump on the shop and nab your free stuff. You’ll also be glad to know that you can get a partial refund on spent blueprints by tapping on the refresh button on that equipment’s screen:
The refund means that you can pretty much safely invest in lower-rarity gear.
Lastly, each piece of gear has rarity. The rarities, in ascending order, are common (white), uncommon (green), rare (blue), epic (purple), and legendary (orange).
The rarer the piece of gear, the better its base stats and the higher its level cap (via blueprints). More important, however, are the lines that are unlocked via rarity.
As you can see, each piece of gear has new stats locked behind some familiar-looking locks. By raising the rarity of a piece of gear, you unlock more of its potential, resulting in more stats for harvest mode and new, better skills to choose from in survivor mode. Take note that the abilities at the top (and beside the portrait) only apply in harvest mode, while the bottom ones (that unlock tomes) only apply in survivor mode.
To raise the rarity of a piece of gear, we’ll need to merge it with two other identical copies of that item.
As you can see in the image above, by fusing three common Knight’s Relics, I now have one uncommon one that both has a harvest speed bonus as well as a new health regeneration tome for use in survivors mode!
Villager Fusion
As with your gear, you can also fuse villagers to get a single copy of a better villager.
Higher rarity villagers offer different passive boosts, such as faster movement speed or the ability to carry more items. The higher a villager’s rarity, the better its passive boost. You can see the passive boosts a villager gets with each rarity by tapping on their portrait while assigned to a workplace.
To merge villagers, you’ll need to assign all the copies you want to merge to the same workplace. Once that’s done, tap on “Merge (building)” to initiate the fusion process.
Unlike gear, I would suggest against being too merge-happy unless all your buildings are fully staffed!
Kingdom Perks
Kingdom perks are passive upgrades that affect your entire kingdom. These can be acquired by tapping on the yellow gem icon when beside your keep – if you don’t see it, you need to level up your keep more.
To acquire kingdom perks, you’ll need to get Light Shards, which are those meteorite-looking things in craters around the map. Pulling these shards out is difficult, so you’ll need to buy magnets from the trader. Magnets are (thankfully) bought using in-game resources and you can buy up to five magnets at once. You’ll have to wait down a timer while trading for magnets (you can watch an ad to skip this, but it’s only 15 seconds) and you can watch an extra ad to get double the magnets from your deal, which I recommend taking.
With magnet in hand, park your king beside a crater and wait down the timer to get your Light Shard. Once you have the Light Shard, make your way back to your keep and buy the next tier of kingdom perks. Rinse and repeat.
Of course, there’s a catch. Not all Light Shards are ready to be pulled out from the ground. Look for a telltale glow like this…
…as it indicates that that Light Shard can be retrieved. Typically, you’ll unlock new Light Shards by gaining more account levels.
On a side note, the trader is where you go to get intermediate resources, like planks, gears, and bigger fruit.
Striking Back
The last step in rebuilding Kingland is taking back land from Malethar. To do this, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with survivors-like gameplay and take on the forces of evil on varied battlefields. Here’s what you need to know.
Quick Tips:
- “Survivors mode” is any game mode where you move around and fight enemies with your auto-firing weapons.
- Pick up gems dropped by enemies to level up. At each level, you can choose to either get a new weapon or tome (passive) or level up one that you already have.
- In Kingland, you can reroll your level up choices or get all of them by watching an ad.
- Objectives differ based on where you’re playing the game; hot air balloon stages merely require you to survive for a short period of time and then kill all enemies, while secret portal levels challenge you to survive as long as you can.
- Use movement to control mobs. The most basic way of doing this is by moving in large circles. This will cause mobs to condense into a predictable blob in the middle of the screen.
- Always be ready to change your movement patterns on the fly, especially when new types of enemies with different abilities start appearing.
- Never let yourself get backed into a corner!
- There’s no right or wrong choice when it comes to what to pick at level up. The best item is always the one that will fix your current problem, though ideally, you should have both single-target and AOE capabilities.
- Be sure to experiment with the different weapons and tomes that you unlock.
- Pickups will spawn around the map.
- Some pickups (magnet, heart) are only usable inside survivors mode.
- Other pickups carry over to the main game. These are blueprints, gear keys, and potions.
- Silver keys and blueprints are always free to pick up. Gold keys and potions require you to watch an ad. Apart from taking your head out of the game (thus disrupting your tempo), the ad will not pause the game on continue.
Survivors Core
In the survivors-like genre, your main task is to move around and defeat enemies with your auto-firing weapons; by default, your king has a powerful but short-ranged sword swipe. You’ll collect experience from fallen foes in the form of gems, and once you get enough gems, you’ll level up and can select a new weapon or tome (passive boost) to add to your arsenal.
You can also choose to forgo a new weapon or tome in favor of upgrading one you already have. Each level on a weapon or tome improves its abilities by a considerable amount, with max-level weapons cleaving through foes like a hot knife through butter. Kingland also allows you to take multiple abilities/tomes with each level by watching an ad. If you don’t like your choices, you can also reroll by watching an ad.
Your goal in each survivor level is to meet the objective. For hot air balloon stages, the objective is to survive a few minutes, then eliminate all remaining foes. The secret portal, on the other hand, is a full-on survival mode where you need to kill as many enemies as you can before your inevitable demise; the more baddies you beat, the better your rewards. Note that hot air balloon stages can only be played once, while the secret portal can be challenged as often as you like – if there’s a limit, I haven’t reached it.
Use Movement to Control Mobs
The first lesson any new player needs to learn in the survivors genre is mob control. While your weapons are powerful, mobs tend to scale exponentially in terms of health, meaning it’s very easy to get overwhelmed. The easiest way to manage enemies is via movement.
The simplest way to do this is to bunch enemies up into a blob by moving in large circles. By keeping enemies in the middle of the screen, it becomes easier to predict their movement pattern, and you’ll be able to pick up those tasty experience gems easier.
While circular movement is handy, it won’t always work. In later waves (and especially secret portal mode), more devious enemies will appear to challenge your strategies. Don’t get stuck in a simple movement pattern, and be ready to adapt to the ever-changing battlefield.
And lastly, never let yourself get backed into a corner. Having no movement options often results in death!
Pick the Right Tools
The next most important thing is to learn to determine which weapon or tome to pick at each level. As a new player, the choice may seem daunting, but it’s quite simple: pick whichever tool will help you overcome your current problems. One way to do that is to ask yourself the following questions:
- Am I getting overwhelmed by the number of mobs? Pick an AOE weapon.
- Are there particularly strong mobs that I’m having trouble dealing with? Pick a single-target DPS weapon.
- Is maneuverability becoming an issue? Am I getting trapped? Pick mobility or health upgrades.
In general, you should aim to have answers to both high-hp single-target threats and AOE to clear up trash mobs.
As you continue playing and gaining (real) experience in this mode, you’ll be able to choose solutions more easily. But as a new player, it’s your task to try out every tool and see if they have a place in your playstyle. If you’re having a hard time choosing, here are my takes on the starter weapons:
- The Fine Crossbow is a decent high-damage tool that fires multiple projectiles at high levels, making it great for taking out tanky targets while still providing AOE coverage.
- The Boomerang is a great mix of DPS and AOE – it hits multiple foes while offering good damage output. Probably my favorite of all the starter weapons.
- The Bombs are decent, if a bit unpredictable. With upgrades and especially AOE tomes, they become much more reliable and useful.
- The Royal Spear offers amazing AOE at the cost of very low damage. The projectiles penetrate infinitely, so it’s more of a crowd control weapon. Unfortunately, the Boomerang exists.
- Buddy’s Toxics deal good AOE damage, but it’s a circumstantial weapon that relies on your movement to get mileage – meaning you can’t park yourself if you want to maximize damage with this weapon.
Lastly, note that your weapon and tome slots are locked by your account level:
This means that the more you progress in the main game, the better your secret portal runs will go!
Pickups
Occasionally, there’ll be pickups on the battlefield. These can range from in-game weapons and magnets that will scoop up all available experience to stuff that you can take outside, such as potions, blueprints, and perhaps most importantly, gear chest keys. And yes, these pickups will appear on both hot air balloon and secret portal stages, making these levels a fantastic way to earn potions, keys, and blueprints.
While silver keys and blueprints are free, potions and gold keys will require you to watch an ad. Beware that any pickup that requires an ad will NOT pause the game on return. This can be disruptive for tempo, but if you really need that ad pickup, go ahead and take it. Just consider yourself warned.
The Road to Reconstruction
Restoring the kingdom will be a long and arduous process; after all, we’re starting from scratch. But with grit and determination, our king will take on every challenge one step at a time, until eventually, Kingland is healed.
That concludes this beginner’s guide to Kingland, and with this knowledge, you’re more than ready to take the battle to Malethar and restore your kingdom to its former glory. If you have any suggestions on how to improve this guide or corrections to make, let us know in the comment area!