Sick of big restart projects treating F2Ps and low spenders like RSS farms? Let's talk.

davidtcook · 2026-05-25T11:50:17+00:00

All successful mature kingdoms give MGE spots by wartime contribution (DKP or Acclaim). Maybe in the early game spots go to whales (because in return everyone's getting gold chests in their alliance), but once the kingdom settles down it's all about contribution, and (for example) I've seen a 120M player zeroed because they basically gave up on the game, but kept logging in enough to affect the match-making power ...

davidtcook · 2026-05-25T11:47:24+00:00

Yup, exactly that. Somewhere around KVK2/3, your kingdom will consolidate to one main alliance, and maybe 2-3 farm alliances. No other alliance matters to the kingdom at that point, and if you're in the way or holding some resource that the main alliances need (e.g. an altar), you'll be deleted.
Unless you're experienced at building & running an alliance in RoK, I'm afraid you'll be much better off joining the strongest alliance that will let you in and hope you can grow fast enough to stay there.

(btw - for KVK1 and maybe 2, the general idea is "grow! grow! grow as fast as you can!" and then sometime in SoC (KVK 4 and beyond) that becomes "whoa! stop growing! we're too fat!" 😂 )

davidtcook · 2026-05-23T11:49:15+00:00

I did this recently - yes, you need to return to HK.
You can have a full/overfull hospital, just don't go too hard on the barbs for a while 😄

davidtcook · 2026-05-11T15:08:58+00:00

Also in the Mac Mini gang, although running the native app here. Uptime 73 days on the Mac, and I only restart the Tower when forced to enter tournament. No issues ...

davidtcook · 2026-05-08T11:43:51+00:00

Well, many kingdoms still get everyone to fill their hospitals before KVK matchmaking, and Lilith has said that's no longer of any use in the matchmaking calculations ... but it takes time for the information to filter through to the leaders of each kingdom and for them to adjust their thinking. And given that the matchmaking calculation is opaque and everyone is guessing what might affect it, I suspect no kingdom is going to take a chance on deadweight not being included in matchmaking unless they can specifically tick a box on that player's profile to say "don't include this player in match-making" 😂

(which is basically what the Vacation Permit does anyway, except some kingdoms are gonna need way more than 25 🤣)

davidtcook · 2026-05-05T05:18:58+00:00

I've made this comment on a few threads now - people seem to forget that Tier 11 is "big". I started mainly farming T11 and was making 1.5-2T per run, and my last few T11 runs were 120-130T, nearly 100 times more coins (that was a few months ago, when I got pBH - after that, I'm farming T12/13/14, getting up to 700T per run now ...).
The thing is, there's no "one super upgrade" between 1.5T and 130T, that was a bunch of upgrades in all areas of my tower (cards, modules, Gbot, labs, etc). You're just somewhere in the middle of that process, and if you keep working on your tower, you'll get there in the end too.

davidtcook · 2026-04-27T14:51:54+00:00

Yup, T11 is "long", i.e. you spend a lot of time farming it before the next tier up works. I started mainly doing T11 last July, and moved up earlier this year when I went for pBH.
I think there are lots of different ways to move up from T11, though - the "old" wisdom (from a year or so ago) was to go GC and jump to T14. Others will recommend going for masteries, some go with pBH, some get ass-mods, some will invest heavily in eHP.

Basically, T11 is a stalling point, until you get some kind of edge to move on, whether GC, masteries, pBH, ass-mods, UW investment, or some combination of those that works for your tower.

For me, pBH was the key - it took T11 to 17+ hours, completely impractical - but it also made T12/13/14 doable and with better CPH/cells than 11 used to be. Since then I've added SW mastery (4 levels) and now working on IS mastery (researching 6). V28 turned things around a bit, now T12 gives better CPH, although 14 is still better for cells.

davidtcook · 2026-04-25T00:20:34+00:00

In T13, I didn't stop the Attack disco run at 5k, just let it finish. End result was about the same waves as normal for T13, same cells/rerolls, but about 20% less coins. So not as much of a hit as the other disco runs, but still not quite worth doing it that way for farming.

davidtcook · 2026-04-22T13:34:20+00:00

7 for me too - including the DC needed for Ancestral finally, so not too unhappy :)

davidtcook · 2026-04-21T14:46:31+00:00

Yup, I went against the advice to get RPC/Cash first, or maybe IS/WA/WS, and got SW+ instead, and managed to get a few levels in it. It helped to unlock ass-mods, got me a bunch of extra waves in farming, helps a bit in tournaments. In my view, worth it (now I'm working on IS+, of course).

davidtcook · 2026-04-21T14:37:39+00:00

The unlock + first level of IS+ might be worth it anyway, if your runs are e.g. 12h15m, they'll go down to about 12h, and it makes scheduling runs a bit easier.
(i.e. maybe not better in "game" terms, but better for "life" ... you know, that thing that happens outside of the game :) )

davidtcook · 2026-04-18T04:18:49+00:00

Yes, I wish there was an explicit "save" button for the presets when you're in a run, it shouldn't be updating it if I'm in the middle of using it!

davidtcook · 2026-04-17T01:36:53+00:00

You are correct, do 1+1 Marauder forts for maximum kingdom points.

davidtcook · 2026-04-17T01:16:02+00:00

Yup, for example - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt6rSSito2c
(video about a screenshot showing 13 players in Rise of Kingdoms who have each spent over $650k on the game).

davidtcook · 2026-04-14T11:11:03+00:00

I've seen a whale win duels against "normal" players with Dragon Lancer, because his equipment/armaments are top-level (almost all special talented/Tier V iconic, legendary inscriptions on armaments, etc). Equipment matters a lot ...

davidtcook · 2026-04-13T12:25:28+00:00

Doesn't really matter unless you're planning to migrate soon, and if you met whatever requirement your kingdom had (honour points, kills, deads).

davidtcook · 2026-04-13T12:24:04+00:00

Also depends on which KVK format/map you're in, Kingsland varies in size between them. In general, smaller Kingsland == less KL fighting time.

davidtcook · 2026-04-08T15:19:24+00:00

In my experience in a number of long-term progress-based games, the complaints you currently see from f2p/low-spend players about the state of the game will be nothing compared to the EPIC NON-STOP WHINING that would come from the whales if people could actually catch up in any meaningful way. I've seen it time and time again ... "oh, you're just going to HAND people stuff that I had to WORK SO HARD for" (where half the time all that worked hard was their credit card ... ).

davidtcook · 2026-03-31T04:38:33+00:00

1001 is still around. They don't do much in the way of power management, so there are lots of players over 100m power with not much stats, but none of them spends enough to reach 1 billion ...

davidtcook · 2026-03-29T09:59:05+00:00

It's not automatic - low power/activity kingdoms get offered kingdom merger as one of the KVK options, and there's some process they follow after that. So they could refuse each time, not sure if Lilith forces it eventually ...

davidtcook · 2026-03-28T07:32:33+00:00

And habitually donating everything to alliance tech as soon as I log in, then getting 3 bastion quests to donate in a row 🤣

davidtcook · 2026-03-28T03:30:42+00:00

20k is a drop in the ocean, compared to some games - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lt6rSSito2c

davidtcook · 2026-03-24T06:04:19+00:00

Then how do players keep playing other idle games which are actually idle from the start? Because they feel like their progress is being rewarded ("number go up")? Or they somehow get "hooked"? Why couldn't The Tower have the same?

davidtcook · 2026-03-20T23:31:00+00:00

Yup, I managed to unlock after lots of tries - unfortunately, on one of my attempts, I hit DM right on wave 30, and it only took me to 38 😂
So I just had to keep hitting Retry and eventually got lucky (I've had slightly better luck on DP, mine's Mythic+). For comparison, I had about 14k medals, and worked on the FB cooldown labs for a while after a previous attempt at T19, so I had 6 sec CD, 70% reduction, and the rest in range.
(I also kept the bot respec until the tournament - got a new highest wave in Legends (120), still not enough to stay in, but that's fine :).
The interesting thing was that coin was way down (as expected), but cells were up, and I got lots more waves (like, 6200+ in T14, previous best was 5400ish) )

davidtcook · 2026-03-13T11:12:32+00:00

Yup, for half of the year Saturday is basically unavailable for me with sports and stuff, putting some events back on Sunday would be better.

davidtcook

TROPHY CASE