Introduction

Kingdom Maker is a MMO strategy game taking place in a fantasy world. The main focus is on building troops and ultimately subdue enemy alliances with superior forces, but initially you will be focussed on activities such as growing your city, unlocking rooms in your keep, growing your family, research, unlocking champions.

Tutorial

When you start a new game you get into a tutorial like mode in which you get step by step instructions what to do to develop your account. Especially if you are new to this type of game I advice you to pay close attention to these instructions. Later on you can still access the owl (via the green book with yellow exclamation mark at the left bottom of your screen) who advises you next steps of development, but once you get the hang of things you can also follow your own path.

Player Profile and Binding Account

You can get to the Player Profile by clicking on your family symbol at the left top. You can customize your family symbol, rename your family, look up some accomplishments of your family, and access the settings via the gear button at the right top. Via the Account tab you can bind your account, for example to a facebook account. This is highly recommended, because even if you don't spend any money, you will likely still invest a lot of time on this game and it would be a pity if it all goes to waste if your tablet or phone crashes.

Alliance

An important step is to find a suitable Alliance. Via the Alliance menu you can apply to join an alliance or join one of the alliances that are currently open for new recruits. As with other games with alliances it is important to find a likeminded group of people. Don't be afraid to switch to another alliance if you feel your first is not a good fit, or if either leader or other members are not active enough. Make sure you have an active group of people. Not only the number of members are important, but also how many actually log in. I haven't found a direct way of seeing how active an alliance member is, e.g. when they last logged in, but if you in your Alliance page click on the member list (the right most purple button in the middle above the alliance description) you can see some useful information. If you see the power of players increasing, that is a good sign. Many very small power players is a bad sign. Also look out for good leadership. An alliance leader with low power is not good. Also have a look at the ranks. If there are no Alliance Managers or Temple Keepers (you can see the symbols by clicking on the i button at the right top) that is also a bad sign, might mean the alliance leader does not have a good understanding of how to run an alliance.

Academy

One of the most important buildings in your city is your Academy. Building and upgrading the Academy unlocks new projects you can research. This can benefit several aspects of your account. Try to make sure you always have a research project active.

Training Troops

There are 4 buildings relevant for training troops. Barracks, Stables, Range and Siege Factory are the building where you can give your assignments to train troops. You can unlock higher tiers of troops via the Combat research in the Academy.

Upgrading Buildings

In general you would like to build and upgrade all your buildings, but having a focus on your Keep is good for starters. The Keep is the main building that you need to upgrade before you can upgrade anything else. As you upgrade it more features, like new buildings, will be unlocked. For each level of the Keep there are different buildings you will need to upgrade, and a lot of buildings have other prerequisite buildings as well, so as you upgrade your Keep, you will also upgrade a lot of other buildings. Do not forget to click the purple shaking hands button once you have started an upgrade, it will ask your alliance members for help. Each alliance members helping will deduce some time from your timers.

Helping Alliance Members with Construction, Research and Training

You and your alliance members can help each other with the timers. Make sure to always click the purple help button whenever it comes up. Especially early on having a group of alliance members online who help fast can really speed up your growth.

Using Gold and Speed Ups

During the game there are various ways to get gold and speed ups, but they are not easy to come by. Once your timers start to be more than just a few minutes you might get tempted to use these to speed up research and construction. My general advice is don't just use these for anything, only use them if you can get something back by winning prizes in the active Events. Saving up some gold and speed ups is important so that it will be easier to win the prizes of those Events.

Power

Although the power of a player has no direct meaning for your strength in combat, it is often used by players as a quick measurement of strength anyway. Typically alliances will set certain power (and Keep lvl) requirements for their players which increase over time. As such it is important you get your power up as well. Power you get from developing your account in various ways, just make sure you keep upgrading, researching, training troops etc and you will see your power increase.

Armies

Compose armies with a family member, troops and champions. These armies can be selected and send out to attack.

Dungeons

You can use your Family members to explore Dungeons for some rewards. This doesn't cost any stamina, but there is a cooldown. So basically it is just best to explore some Dungeons with your family members whenever you can.

Ravager Camp

You can use your Armies to attack Ravager Camps. This costs some food, but you get more in rewards. Hit all those Ravager Camps nearby!

Events

You can win prizes by completing various stages of Events. You can find the active events via the Event menu at the right top. There are various events. See what you have to do, and focus on getting some rewards. For a lot of them you will also just get points and rewards by doing what you would do anyway.

Daily Goals

Via the menu item at the left bottom you can access a list of Quests and Daily Goals. The Daily Goals renew each day and give you points for all kind of simple activities. I'll make a separate guide on this, but it is pretty self explanatory, just complete the tasks and claim rewards.

Resources

Resources are likely going to be a big issue in this game. Better start early on with focussing on getting as much as possible. Upgrading your production buidlings, doing research to increase production are some of the basic ways to do this.

Family Members

You start with a husband and wife. You will be walked through the process of creating a baby in the tutorial. Keep doing this to extend your family. Family members can be assigned to various rooms in your Keep to improve various aspects of the game. Make sure to focus on Nobles research as well, it is necessary to increase the available roles that need to be assigned before a baby can mature.

Later on you will be able to marry your family members to other families, but that falls outside of the scope of this beginner's guide.

Check List of What to Do When You Log In

Most of the things in this section we already mentioned, but it might be good to have a reminder of what you should look at as a minimum when you log into the game:

• Click on the Purple Help icon to Help all alliance members with research and construction, keep doing this as it pops up again
• Look at the Events, see whether you can win/claim some rewards
• Explore Dungeons
• Attack Ravager Camps
• Start a research if none is active
• Start a building upgrades if none is active
• Start a troop training for each type of troops if none is active
• Claim the completed rewards from the Daily Goals
• Claim completed Quests from the Quests menu

If you have more time consider:

• Working more towards completing your Daily Goal milestones
• Working more towards winning rewards for the Events
• Discuss with your alliance members whether there is some nice targets to attack
• Work on extending your family

Conclusion

I hope this helps you getting started. If you have questions, or if you have other suggestions for beginners, please share in the comment section.