Iron Crown

1. Press Play and you’re in. You enter a server with free room as a guest. There’s no sign-up, naming or server-picking screen. You start as “Lord of Dawn #number”; rename yourself from your lord info at the top (the first change right away, then once every 30 days).
2. Follow Lia, your guide. Upgrade the Town Hall → upgrade the farm, lumber camp and mine → upgrade the barracks → train 90 soldiers and assign workers → capture the neighboring village. You play it with the real game controls, and it takes 2–4 minutes.
3. Link an account after your first capture. Choose Google, Kakao or email under “Link an account to save your story” and your realm and army are kept as they are. You can do it later, but until you link, clearing your browser cookies means losing your realm.
4. A second story and first-day goals follow. In Lia’s “A Banner We Share” you join an alliance, enhance lord gear and grow a hero once each, then follow 8 first-day goals that come with rewards. You can skip both.
5. From there, it’s up to you. The “Next growth goal” card at the top tells you what to do now, and “Go to goal” opens the right screen.

Time keeps running while you’re away. Production, construction, training and marches all run on server time. The basic rhythm: drop in, check your reports, queue the next building and training.

A castle has 8 kinds of buildings, each growing to Lv.10 and then fortifying through ★1–★5. Other buildings can only reach the Town Hall’s level, so the Town Hall comes first. As long as you have the resources, you can upgrade several buildings at once, and cancelling construction or training in progress refunds everything you paid.

Long upgrades come in stages

A level whose base build time is over a day is built in stages of a day or less (for example, Town Hall 7→8 takes 4 stages and 9→10 takes 12). Each stage costs its share of the price and time and adds its share of the effect. New unlocks — other buildings’ caps, troop tiers, outpost slots — open only when the whole level is done.

After Lv.10: fortifying and stone

• Fortify ★1–★5 — a Lv.10 building keeps climbing in stars. Each ★ adds half of what one more level past Lv.10 would (at ★5 the Town Hall’s command limit goes from 5,400 to 6,900, and the warehouse holds 450,000 more). ★1 takes 8 stages and ★5 takes 16, about 22 hours each. Every building fortifies on its own, with no limit on how many at once.
• Stone — each fortify stage costs 12,000 wood, 8,000 iron, 2,200 gold, 9,000 food and 60 stone. Every castle whose Town Hall is Lv.10 makes stone each day (120 for the home castle, 60 for an outpost), and you gather more at quarries on the world map (shown from Town Hall Lv.10). Stone is kept outside the warehouse, so it can’t be raided or exchanged.

Citizens and taxes

• Idle citizens can be assigned to a workplace or trained as soldiers. Every recruit is one less worker.
• Tax policy (low, balanced, high) trades gold against morale. Morale affects production and how fast new citizens arrive; if food runs out, morale drops and newcomers stop coming.
• Gold pays for training, healing, scouting, heroes and moving your home castle, so it’s the most precious. Turn spare wood and food into it with “Exchange” at the top.

Zones A–D

The map is split into four zones around the Crown Castle, from A (center) to D (edge). The closer to the center, the bigger the castles and the better the production — and the stronger the NPC defenders. Everyone starts in zone D.

Zone D is a settler protection zone. Other lords can’t attack or scout castles in D, and a lord whose home castle is in D can’t attack other lords’ castles or the Crown Castle. NPC castles and alliance drills are open to all. Capture an outpost further in and move your home castle there to graduate from protection.

Capturing NPC castles and outposts

• Tap a castle on the map and open “Castle info · March”. You’ll see its defenders and rewards (production and population capacity).
• Pick a commanding hero and how many of each troop type, then “Attack and capture”. Marching time grows with distance, and the server resolves the battle against the defenders present when you arrive.
• The march panel’s forecast compares head counts only and warns “You may lose” when the sides are close. Heroes, walls, tiers and counters show only in the fight.
• A castle you win becomes an outpost that adds resources and citizens. You can hold up to 3 outposts (4 at Town Hall Lv.10), and at most 1 in zone D.
• Turn on “After a victory, keep this army there as a garrison” and your army stays to guard the outpost. Leave it empty and another alliance can take it right away.

Scouting · raids · shields

• Scout (costs gold) to see an enemy’s defenses in advance. Results are shared with your alliance automatically.
• Other lords’ home castles can be raided from Town Hall Lv.4 (they can’t be captured). Outposts can be captured and taken.
• A shield protects your home castle for 8 hours. You get 5 free every week (reset Monday 00:00 KST, no carry-over). Attacking another lord drops it, and you can’t raise one again for 30 minutes.

Beast hunts — by alliance rally

• Ten rideable beasts roam the world map. Grade Ⅰ on the edge (Ash Wolf, War Boar, Great-horned Stag, Armored Bear), grade Ⅱ in the middle (Nightmare, Griffin, Manticore), grade Ⅲ near the center (Wyvern, Unicorn, Dragon).
• Beasts are hunted only by alliance rally. Tap a beast and open a rally with “Prepare hunt”; it marches once two or more lords have joined. Each beast has its own recommended head count and troop tier.
• Lord stamina is 100 a day (refilled at 00:00 KST), and opening a hunt rally costs 10. Joining someone else’s hunt costs nothing. You can lead up to 3 hunt rallies at once, each with a different hero.
• A win gives every participant food (Ⅰ 3,000 · Ⅱ 6,000 · Ⅲ 12,000) and beast essence (Ⅰ 2 · Ⅱ 3 · Ⅲ 5, up to 5 hunts a day). No one dies.

Mounts

• Every won hunt has a 0.5% chance of sending that beast as a mount to your alliance stable. If 150 wins in a grade go by without one, the next win brings one for sure. The leader and officers grant mounts to members.
• Each hero rides one mount. The army that hero leads marches faster (+3–20%), and each mount adds its own troop buffs.
• Riding mastery (levels 0–50) is raised with beast essence and food. Each level makes the mount you ride 1% stronger, ×1.5 at level 50. It works on any mount, and you can raise it before you own one.

Gathering

• Tap a gathering spot and “Send gatherers”. Only soldiers go, no hero (one troop up to your realm power), and it costs no food. You can send 1 troop at once from Town Hall Lv.1, 2 from Lv.4 and 3 from Lv.8.
• Filling up takes 4 hours, and more soldiers carry more. Spots further in give more per trip (D ×1 · C ×1.4 · B ×2 · A ×2.75). What they bring back ignores the warehouse cap, and if you recall them early they bring back what they have filled.
• A spot that runs dry soon reappears somewhere else.

Gatherers outside zone D can be attacked. A lord from another alliance who attacks with a hero and wins takes half of what they have filled and drives them off. Beast essence and stone can’t be taken, and no one dies. Attacking gatherers counts as attacking a lord, so it drops your shield.

Fort sieges — every day

Eight forts ring the Crown Castle in zone B. Each opens for 1 hour at its set time (KST 0, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18, 21:00), and the lord with the longest total hold time wins. The winner gets that fort’s buff (+20% to attack, defense, production, training, construction, marching and more) and its spoils for 24 hours. No one dies.

Crown Castle war — every Sunday 20:00–23:00 KST

1. The server’s alliances fight for 3 hours over the Crown Castle at the center of the map.
2. The winner isn’t whoever holds it at the end, but the alliance with the longest total hold time over the 3 hours.
3. The winning alliance’s leader rules the server for a week, collecting 10% of all server production into the treasury and granting court titles to members.
4. No one dies in the Crown Castle war either. You can’t join while your home castle is in zone D.

War workshop — spare resources into supplies

• Make supplies from resources in the war workshop on the Lord menu. Every castle at Town Hall Lv.5 or higher has one workshop, and a workshop makes one batch at a time (1–40, 15 minutes each). Cancelling returns the whole cost.
• Each switched-on supply is used up one at a time on the marches and battles it fits, and helps only your own troops. Switch one to “Not used” to save it.

A supply is used the moment it takes effect. Rams, snares and medicine right before the battle, rations as the march sets out. A disbanded rally or an expedition that turned back uses none. There is no daily limit, only the cost, so it is a good place for resources when the warehouse fills.

Frontier campaign — how far can you climb this week

• Four frontier strongholds with copper roofs stand on the diagonals around the Crown Castle. Use “To the nearest stronghold” on the Lord menu, or tap one on the map and “Prepare”.
• On arrival your army fights the garrison of your next stage this week. Each stage is guarded 15% harder, and the formation rotates between shield-, spear- and archer-heavy. Check the next formation and pick counters. No one dies.
• When you stall alone, climb with a frontier rally. A rally fights its leader’s stage, and on a win every member who had not cleared that stage moves up to it.
• Every stage you clear for the first time this week pays beast essence, stone and lord iron, and every 5th stage a crown seal. Lord iron and crown seals come within the same weekly and monthly limits as NPC castles.
• A new week starts Monday 00:00 KST. Half of last week’s record is swept at once and paid out, and you carry on from the stage after it. The weekly top 1·2·3 get 6·4·2 of each of the four supplies.
• Open from Town Hall Lv.2.